Pubdate: Fri, 29 Mar 2002
Source: Houston Chronicle (TX)
Webpage: www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/world/1321847
Copyright: 2002 Houston Chronicle Publishing Company Division, Hearst Newspaper
Contact:  http://www.chron.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/198
Author: Stevenson Jacobs

MEXICAN AUTHORITIES ARREST ALLEGED TOP DRUG TRAFFICKER

MEXICO CITY -- In Mexico's latest strike against the country's powerful 
drug cartels, authorities on Thursday announced that they had arrested a 
top trafficker without a shot being fired.

A team of army troops and federal agents seized Adan Medrano Rodriguez 
Wednesday afternoon on a street corner in the city of Matamoros, just 
across the border from Brownsville, officials of Mexico's justice 
department said.

Medrano reportedly was on his way to pick up a new Chevrolet Suburban when 
he was confronted by the arresting troops and police. Officials said he was 
carrying a .38-caliber handgun but did not put up a fight.

Medrano was considered the No. 2 leader of the Matamoros-based Gulf cartel, 
which traffics Colombian cocaine as well as Mexican heroin and marijuana, 
across the Mexican border into Texas and points north as far as New York.

The cartel's boss, Osiel Cardenas, a former Mexican federal police agent, 
remains a fugitive, and the United States is offering a $2 million reward 
for his arrest.

Medrano, alias El Licenciado (The Lawyer), had been wanted by the FBI, the 
Drug Enforcement Administration and Interpol. A U.S. indictment handed up 
in 2000 charged Medrano and other cartel members with drug trafficking and 
the 1999 assault of three U.S. federal agents on the Texas-Mexico border. A 
$2 million reward was offered for information leading to his arrest.

John E. Gartland, special agent in charge of the Houston division of the 
Drug Enforcement Administration, declined to comment.

Medrano was wanted in Mexico on weapons and cocaine possession charges, 
attempted murder and involvement in organized crime. The authorities said 
he was locked up in a Mexico City jail and will soon be transferred to the 
La Palma maximum security prison, the current home of Mexico's most 
notorious drug boss, Benjamin Arellano Felix.

Authorities arrested Arellano Felix on March 9 in the central state of 
Puebla. U.S. officials have expressed their desire to extradite Arellano 
Felix, said to have been responsible for a third of the drugs flowing into 
the United States.

Earlier this week, the FBI confirmed that a man killed during a Feb. 10 
shootout with police in the Pacific Coast state of Sinaloa was in fact 
Arellano Felix's younger brother and the cartel's violent enforcer, Ramon 
Arellano Felix.

On March 14, federal agents captured Manuel Herrera Barraza, alias "El 
Tarzan," said to be the Arellano Felixes' principal smuggler of marijuana 
and cocaine into the western United States.

Mexican special prosecutor Estuardo Bermudez warned this latest arrest 
could create a power vacuum in the region, touching off a bloody turf war 
among rival cartels. Since the Arellano Felix's arrest, several people in 
Tijuana have been killed in gangland-style murders linked to the cartel.

The Gulf cartel burst onto the Mexican drug scene in 1984, quickly becoming 
one of the country's biggest cocaine and marijuana smuggling organizations. 
The group dominates the drug shipping corridor extending from the southern 
Gulf state of Veracruz to the northern border state of Tamaulipas. Drug 
seizures linked to the cartel have been made in Houston, Brownsville, San 
Antonio, Corpus Christi and Austin.
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