MEXICO EXTRADITES DRUG LORD SUSPECT

MEXICO CITY - Alleged drug kingpin Francisco Rafael Arellano Felix
was extradited to the United States on Saturday to face drug charges,
becoming the first major Mexican drug lord suspect to be sent north for trial.

Mexico's extradition of the man who is suspected of having once run
the Arellano Felix drug clan was a victory for U.S. officials, who
have been pushing Mexico to send them more drug lords.

Arellano Felix was loaded into a helicopter in Matamoros, then flown
across the border and handed over to Texas officials in Brownsville
after serving a 10-year sentence in Mexico. He will be taken to
California to face trial on charges stemming from a 1980 case in
which he allegedly sold cocaine to an undercover police officer in
the United States.

U.S. authorities requested Arellano Felix's extradition on June 2,
2003. A federal judge approved that request in 2004, but it took two
years for the Foreign Relations Department to approve the extradition.

Arellano Felix was arrested in December 1993 in Tijuana and was
convicted under Mexico's tough weapons laws rather than for drug
offenses. He was the oldest of seven brothers in a family accused of
running what was throughout the 1990s one of Mexico's largest and
most-violent drug smuggling gangs.

Most of the Arellano Felix brothers have been arrested or killed,
weakening the cartel. But Mexican and U.S. officials said the gang
still moves tons of cocaine and marijuana into the United States from
its operations base in Tijuana, Mexico.

Arellano Felix's brother, Francisco Javier Arellano Felix, was
captured on a fishing boat last month by the U.S. Coast Guard in
international waters off the coast of La Paz, Mexico.

Benjamin Arellano Felix, reputedly the planning chief of the gang,
was arrested in March 2002 in Puebla, east of Mexico City. He is
still in a Mexican jail.

Another brother, Ramon Arellano Felix, was shot to death a month
earlier in the Pacific tourist port of Mazatlan. Police say he had
been the group's feared enforcer, in charge of killing to settle scores.

Eduardo Arellano Felix is still at large, and not much is known of
the gang's other brothers and sisters.