Pubdate: Sat, 23 Feb 2002
Source: New York Times (NY)
Section: International
Copyright: 2002 The New York Times Company
Contact:  http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Tim Weiner
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?194 (Hutchinson, Asa)

MEXICAN PUZZLE: IS MISSING BODY A MOST-WANTED DRUG KINGPIN?

MEXICO CITY -- Mexico's attorney general said today that the government was 
investigating whether a man shot to death on Feb. 10 in the resort town of 
Mazatlan was Ramon Arellano Felix, one of the world's leading cocaine kingpins.

The body has disappeared, the authorities said.

Mr. Arellano Felix, 37, the chief enforcer for Mexico's most violent and 
powerful drug cartel, was the first Mexican cocaine trafficker ever placed 
on the Federal Bureau of Investigation's list of 10 most wanted fugitives.

The F.B.I.'s Web site now has him at the top of that list, alongside Osama 
bin Laden. The United States is offering $2 million for information leading 
to his conviction.

But without the body of the man in question, there is no proof that Mr. 
Arellano Felix is dead. "We're working to confirm that," said the attorney 
general, Rafael Macedo de la Concha. Facts today were few, if tantalizing.

The case so far, which Mr. Macedo de la Concha called "a hypothesis," began 
on the night of Feb. 10, when the state police of Sinaloa, on Mexico's 
Pacific coast, fought a gun battle with a group of men in Mazatlan. When 
the smoke cleared, three men were dead.

One of them carried a federal police identification card in the name of 
Jorge Perez Lopez, a name about as common as Joe Smith. A daily newspaper, 
Noroeste, published a photograph of the card today. It bore a picture of a 
man resembling Mr. Arellano Felix.

On Feb. 11 an unidentified group of people claimed the body from a funeral 
home and vanished, according to Noroeste. Mr. Macedo de la Concha confirmed 
that his office was trying to "determine what happened to the body."

Every important Mexican law enforcement agency has been assigned to destroy 
the Arellano Felix cartel, which is based in Tijuana. The group has killed 
dozens of police officers, prosecutors and judges in the last decade and is 
believed to have corrupted hundreds more. Mexican officials hold the group 
responsible for the murder of the Roman Catholic archbishop of Guadalajara, 
Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo, in 1993.

Despite help from American agencies, including the F.B.I., the C.I.A. and 
the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Mexican authorities have found the 
Arellano Felix group elusive.

The drug agency's director, Asa Hutchinson, said in Mexico City on Thursday 
that the group had "enormous resources," including "large financial assets" 
and "a lot of firepower," which "makes it difficult to get the intelligence 
we need" to arrest its leaders.

But he said bringing the group to justice was one of the highest law 
enforcement goals of the United States.
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