DRUGLORD APPARENTLY WAS KILLED BY HIS OWN PEOPLE

Mexico's top drug prosecutor says Amando Carrillo grew too high-profile.

MEXICO CITY - 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 druglord's slaying, top Mexican
anti-drug prosecutor Mariano Herran Salvatti told The Associated Press.

"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 pioneering use of big 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 druglords battling to move into his
old territory.

Carrillo successfully eluded authorities for years. 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 three 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," said Herran Salvatti. The doctors were bound, beaten, burned
with hot irons, strangled and shot in a torture session that he said
"went on for hours."

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 plastic
surgery.