TESTIMONY REVEALS DRUG LORD 'STRATEGY'

EL PASO -- Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman insulated
himself from his soldiers on the streets of Juarez by having his wife
be a go-between, a witness testified Friday in U.S. District Court.

The witness, Jesus Fierro-Mendez, a former Juarez police captain, said
Guzman wanted to "remain removed from the lower levels of his
organization."

Fierro-Mendez was on the stand for the second day in the drug trial of
Fernando Ontiveros-Arambula and Ma nuel Chavez-Betancourt.

Guzman's Sinaloa drug cartel has been muscling in on the Juarez drug
cartel to take over the lucrative drug corridor through the El Paso
area. Since January 2008, more than 4,700 people have been killed in
the city in what Mexican authorities have called a drug war.

Fierro-Mendez testified that the tactic used by Guzman to insulate
himself and to not know some of his people is common in the drug
underworld. People at the top of the chain of command would never
associate with the people at the bottom, Fierro-Mendez said.

"That is a drug-trafficking strategy for them not to know each other,"
he said.

Prosecutors were trying to show that Ontiveros-Arambula was high in
the organization and knew the right names at the top, something lower
members of the organization would not know.

A DEA agent testified Friday that Ontiveros-Arambula created suspicion
when he began to use the names of known drug traffickers and would
tell people to limit their conversations on the telephone, which were
being recorded while he was in jail.

The DEA agent said that Ontiveros-Arambula would use certain names in
a sequence to get a message to the drug organization hierarchy.

"It's like a combination on a lock. You have to go through one person
to the next person to get where you need to go," the agent testified.

Prosecutors have alleged that Ontiveros-Arambula worked directly under
Guzman to gain control over the Juarez smuggling corridor.
Fierro-Mendez testified that Guzman would have high-level meetings on
how to take control of Chihuahua and push Vicente Carrillo Fuentes out
of the picture. He said Ontiveros-Arambula was a key part of the plan
in the attempted takeover.

Ontiveros-Arambula and Chavez-Betancourt are on trial on charges of
smuggling of hundreds of pounds marijuana into the U.S.

The trial will continue Monday before U.S. District Judge David
Briones.