Mexican forces seize drug kingpin Alberto Carrillo Fuentes, alias 'Ugly Betty'
Mexican security forces say they have arrested the drug lord known as "Ugly Betty", the alleged leader of the notorious Juarez Cartel which has for years been fighting a bloody turf war along the country's border with the United States.
By Hannah Strange
September 2, 2013Wanted for drug trafficking, murder and organised crime, Alberto Carrillo Fuentes was seized by federal police in the western state of Nayarit, an official from the Mexican attorney general's office told AFP on Sunday.
The arrest, reportedly in a hotel district of Nayarit where Carrillo Fuentes was hiding out, represents another coup for the government of Enrique Peña Nieto, which has claimed some mighty scalps in its battle against the country's drug cartels in recent months.
In July, forces captured Miguel Angel Treviño, alias "Z-40", the leader of the brutal drug gang Los Zetas. That was followed last month by the detention of Gulf Cartel kingpin Mario Ramirez Treviño.
Mr Peña Nieto was elected president last year as voters appalled by six years of brutal drug violence flocked back to the traditional ruling party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) which for seven decades kept an iron grip on the country through a combination of corruption and sometimes ruthless repression.
The PRI was kicked out of office in 2000 but two presidential terms and one drug war later it sailed back to the presidency as Mexicans alarmed at the spiralling bloodshed accepted its argument that only it, as the old party of power, had the ability to take on the country's drug cartels.
In toppling three major kingpins in as many months, he has notched up some headline-grabbing successes. Mr Peña Nieto has also claimed a downturn in the drug killings which have ravaged the country in the past six years.
Critics have questioned his statistics however, and argue that removing drug capos has little practical effect as successors are quickly installed. US law enforcement officials in the region privately acknowledge that unless significant damage is inflicted on cartel leaderships in one blow, taking out individual leaders is often largely symbolic and can generate further violence through power struggles.
Carrillo Fuentes is believed to have taken over the Juarez Cartel after his brother Vicente "The Viceroy" Carrillo Fuentes, who remains a wanted fugitive, relinquished the reins. He has presided over a bloody battle for control of key drug routes along the country's border with the United States, notably around Ciudad Juarez, the infamously violent city which until held the unfortunate mantle of the world's murder capital and for which the cartel is named.
That turf war has been responsible for much of the violence in the country's northwestern states, though Ciudad Juarez has seen a decline in killings as the powerful Sinaloa Cartel led by Joaquin "El Chapo (Shorty)" Guzman beat back Carrillo Fuentes' gang to establish near total control in the area.
The cartel was founded by another brother, Amado Carrillo Fuentes, known as "The Lord of the Skies" for his large fleet of aircraft used to smuggle drugs to the United States. He died in mysterious circumstances following plastic surgery in 1997.
Around 70,000 people are estimated to have been killed in drug related violence since the government declared a military offensive against the country's cartels in 2006. Many of the victims have been civilians.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnew...Ugly-Betty.html
