U.S. catches alleged leader of crime family

MEXICO CITY – The accused leader of a violent Tijuana crime family that allegedly smuggled hundreds of tons of cocaine and marijuana into the United States was captured by the U.S. Coast Guard while deep-sea fishing off the southern tip of Baja California, officials said Wednesday.

Francisco Javier Arellano Felix, 36, nicknamed “The Wildcat,” was taken into custody aboard a U.S.-registered boat, the Dock Holiday, in international waters about 15 miles off the Baja California peninsula, U.S. authorities said. He was traveling under an alias, but confessed his identity to his captors.

The arrest was based on a 2003 U.S. indictment that charged him with conspiracy, smuggling and murder. A $5 million bounty had been offered for his capture, as the reputed leader of the so-called Arellano Felix Organization.

At its height in the late 1990s, the cartel was believed responsible for supplying nearly half of the cocaine sold in the United States, a significant chunk of what officials estimate is a $60 billion-a-year illegal drug trade.

U.S. and Mexican authorities blame the cartel for at least a score of murders of police officers, journalists and rivals, as well as the accidental killing of Roman Catholic Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo during a 1993 shootout among cartel rivals at the Guadalajara airport.

Although weakened with the killing of one brother and the imprisonment of another, the Arellano Felix gang remained one of Mexico’s largest drug smuggling organizations after joining forces last year with the Gulf Cartel, authorities say.

The gang hired assassins to kidnap, torture and kill adversaries in a struggle to dominate lucrative smuggling routes that link Mexico with California, say prosecutors.

“The Arellano Felix organization is the largest and most violent drug trafficking operation in the Tijuana, Baja California area,” U.S. Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty said at a Washington news conference Wednesday announcing the arrest.

Arellano Felix now faces life in prison if convicted on charges that cover the cartel’s purchase of tons of cocaine from Colombia that, beginning in 1986, were smuggled into California through Mexico via tunnels, vehicles, airplanes, helicopters and in backpacks. The cartel is accused of trading money and guns for cocaine from the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia guerrilla group.

Arellano Felix is “one of the 45 most notorious, most wanted drug traffickers in the world,” said Michael Braun, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s assistant administrator for operations.

Arellano Felix and his drug cartel are accused of 20 homicides in the United States and Mexico, McNulty said, and allegedly “recruited, trained and armed groups of bodyguards and assassins” to carry out their day-to-day work. One alleged victim was Francisco J. Ortiz Franco, an editor at Tijuana’s crusading weekly newspaper Zeta, who was killed two years ago after a series of stories on their drug business.

The Tijuana-based cartel is accused of smuggling heroin and methamphetamine and, authorities believe, built an elaborate 2,400-foot underground tunnel, discovered in January, that stretched under the U.S. border to a San Diego-area warehouse.