DRUG KINGPIN IS CAPTURED BY MEXICANS

MEXICO CITY, March 9 -- Mexican authorities arrested Benjamín Arellano
Félix, the chief of the nation's most powerful and violent drug gang, early
this morning, Mexican and American officials said.

"It is an incredible victory," said the head of the United States Drug
Enforcement Administration, Asa Hutchinson.

The arrest took place at 1 a.m. at a private home in Puebla, 65 miles
southeast of Mexico City, said Mexico's attorney general, Rafael Macedo de
la Concha. Police officers and soldiers found an altar in the house with
photographs of Mr. Arellano Félix's brother Ramón, the cartel's notorious
enforcer.

Under interrogation this morning, Benjamín Arellano Félix confirmed that his
brother was dead, Mr. Macedo de la Concha said. Ramón Arelleno Félix is
believed to have been shot and killed in the Pacific coast resort town of
Mazatlán on Feb. 10. But his corpse vanished; authorities are still
conducting DNA tests on a bloodstain left behind.

"The legend is being brought to an end," Clemente Vega García, the chief of
Mexico's armed forces, said at an early morning news conference in Mexico
City.

The arrest of Benjamín Arellano Félix, 49, and the presumed death of Ramón,
37, together represent one of the biggest breakthroughs for law enforcement
in the long history of the drug wars in Mexico, the authorities said.

"With the death of Ramón Arellano and the detention of Benjamín, the
Arellano Félix cartel is being broken up," Mr. Macedo de la Concha said.

Benjamín Arellano Félix led the criminal operations of the most feared drug
gang in Mexico. The gang, created by six Arellano Félix brothers 20 years
ago, used hundreds of killings and uncounted millions in bribes to win
control of most of Mexico's border with southern California.

Their power reached from Peru and Colombia, the source of their cocaine,
across Mexico and deep into the United States. Twenty-two suspected
associates of the cartel were arrested in Minnesota, Colorado and California
on Friday, including one charged with running a major cocaine ring from
Rapid City, S.D.

American and Mexican authorities said that over the years the gang
transported hundreds of tons of drugs, mainly Colombian cocaine but also
heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana, into the United States in
transactions worth billions of dollars.

Benjamín Arellano Félix is under indictment in San Diego on 10 counts of
drug trafficking, money laundering and aiding and abetting crimes of
violence. This morning, Ramón remained on the Federal Bureau of
Investigation's list of the 10 most wanted fugitives, his picture facing
Osama bin Laden's on the agency's Web site.

While American agencies, including the F.B.I., the C.I.A. and the Drug
Enforcement Administration, helped pursue the gang, the arrest of Benjamín
Arellano Félix was a purely Mexican operation.

Mr. Hutchinson today praised Mexico's president, Vicente Fox, for
"supporting the law and reclaiming Mexico from drug traffickers."

"Law can triumph over lawlessness," Mr. Hutchinson said.

Days after taking office in December 2000, Mr. Fox went to Tijuana, the
cartel's base, and vowed to defeat the Arellano Félix brothers. "The
problem," he said, "is that they are hidden by the society they live in."

That was something of an understatement. The cartel paid small fortunes in
bribes to hundreds of Mexican police officers, prosecutors, judges,
politicians and even American border agents.

Its enforcers offered a choice: "plata o plomo?" -- silver or lead, money or
bullets. But the cartel's wall of protection began cracking two years ago.

Its chief financial adviser and money-launderer, Jesús Labra Avilés, was
arrested. Then its daily operations officer, Ismael Higuera Guerrero, was
captured. And last year, a key lieutenant, Everardo Arturo Páez Martínez,
became the first Mexican drug kingpin extradited from a Mexican prison and
convicted in an American court.

The creation last year of a Mexican organized-crime unit, which works side
by side with the United States antidrug agency in Mexico, has led to arrests
of members of all the major Mexican cartels. But today's arrest was
immediately deemed the biggest catch in years.

"With Benjamín and Ramón out of circulation, the Arellano Félix organization
will just implode," said Donald J. Thornhill Jr., a United States drug
enforcement agent who fought the gang for years in Mexico.

"It's been a long road, and everybody's happy about this today," he said.
"But as long as there's demand for drugs here in the United States, some
other group will fill the vacuum."

-- MAP Posted-by: Doc-Hawk

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