DRUG LORD SLAIN IN INSIDE JOB, OFFICIALS ALLEGE

Amado Carrillo Fuentes' cartel ordered him killed in July because he had
become a liability, investigators say.

MEXICO CITY (AP) --The death of Mexico's No. 1 cocaine trafficker, slain by
his own plastic surgeons, was ordered by his own cartel because he had
become a liability to a thriving business, investigators allege.

Casting new light on the slaying, Mexico's top drug fighter said in an
interview this week that investigators now believe that Amado Carrillo
Fuentes was killed because the manhunt for him hurt the cartel's business.

Investigators also now theorize that the three doctors responsible for
Carrillo's death were tortured to death by his relatives in an attempt to
determine the mastermind behind the drug lord's slaying, top Mexican
anti-drug prosecutor Mariano Herran Salvatti said.

"We believe that it was an internal deal. Amado Carrillo wasn't killed by
outsiders but by people within his own organization," Herran Salvatti said.
"He was becoming uncomfortable for the organization."

The manhunt for the head of the Juarez cartel "was at such a level it put
in danger" drug trafficking deals, Herran Salvatti said.

Known as the "Lord of the Skies" for his use of huge passenger jets to
bring tons of cocaine to Mexico from Colombia, Carrillo was the country's
No. 1 cocaine trafficker at the time of his death.

After Carrillo's death July 4 following plastic surgery to change his
appearance, attention focused on other drug lords battling to move into his
old territory.

Several theories emerged in the media as to who was responsible, including
the possibility that Carrillo was killed by followers of the Tijuana-based
Arellano Felix brothers, who lead Mexico's most violent drug gang.

Carrillo successfully eluded authorities for years. Once, local police
officers allegedly in his pay helped him flee his planned arrest by federal
agents at his sister's wedding.

But his boldness led to his death.

"Amado Carrillo began to lose his anonymity when he began to have more
girlfriends," Herran Salvatti said. "He went to restaurants a lot more, and
people began taking photographs of him."

Authorities believe that pressure led him to a Mexico City clinic for
plastic surgery to change his looks. But doctors at the clinic injected a
dose of the sleeping drug Dormicum that "they must have known would kill
him," Herran Salvatti said at a news conference in November.

Investigators allege that Carrillo's relatives, led by his brother Vicente,
tortured the doctors. The doctors' bodies were found four months after
Carrillo's death, stuffed into oil drums on a seldom-traveled highway in
the southern state of Guerrero.

"The most accepted version is that the family killed them in revenge,"
Herran Salvatti said. "And that they may have been trying to investigate
themselves as to where the order [to kill Carrillo] had come from.

"The degree of torture was such . . . that they were trying to get
something out of them," Herran Salvatti said.

Four days after the doctors' bodies were found, prosecutors announced that
two of the three had faced formal charges for intentionally killing
Carrillo. The third doctor, though not charged, participated in the
surgery.

Sergio Aguilar, the drug lord's lawyer, was reported missing soon after the
doctors' bodies were discovered. "I think he disappeared on his own
initiative," Herran Salvatti said, "after he saw what happened to the
doctors."

Copyright Los Angeles Times