Pubdate: Fri, 23 Oct 2009
Source: New York Times (NY)
Page: A1, Front Page
Copyright: 2009 The New York Times Company
Contact:  http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: James C. McKinley Jr.
Note: Liz Robbins contributed reporting from New York, Charlie Savage 
from Washington and Solomon Moore from Los Angeles.

U.S. ARRESTS HUNDREDS IN RAIDS ON DRUG CARTEL

HOUSTON -- Staging raids in 19 states, the Justice Department struck 
this week at one of Mexico's most ruthless drug-trafficking 
organizations, a cultlike group known as La Familia Michoacana and 
notorious for beheading its enemies.

Calling it the largest strike ever undertaken against a Mexican drug 
cartel, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced the arrests of 
303 people in the past two days, the latest action in a four-year 
investigation.

Law enforcement officials said the arrests and indictments would deal 
a major blow to a distribution network that trucked methamphetamine 
and cocaine to major cities in the United States, then sent cash and 
arms in the other direction.

La Familia controls much of the drug traffic in central Mexico and 
terrorizes the population there, the authorities said, torturing and 
killing its enemies, including police officers, and leaving the 
bodies in public with cryptic religious messages saying the dead 
suffered divine retribution.

"The sheer level and depravity of violence that this cartel has 
exhibited far exceeds what we, unfortunately, have become accustomed 
to from other cartels," Mr. Holder said. He added: "While this cartel 
may operate from Mexico, the toxic reach of its operations extends to 
nearly every state within our country."

The arrests were made Wednesday and Thursday in 38 cities, with major 
distribution rings the focus in Dallas, Atlanta and Seattle. The 
raids were part of a larger push against La Familia, Project 
Coronado, which had led to about 900 arrests in the past four years, 
Mr. Holder said.

As the raids were carried out in the United States, the Mexican 
authorities on Thursday arrested six members of the cartel, including 
two midlevel commanders in the towns of Taretan and Morelia.

None of those arrested in the United States were major figures in the 
upper echelons of the organization, law enforcement officials said. 
They ran the gamut from people who oversaw city distribution networks 
to street-level dealers and gun-smugglers. The authorities said the 
sheer number of arrests would seriously disrupt the cartel's 
distribution system.

In addition, Mr. Holder said, the authorities have seized more than 
$32 million in American currency, 2,700 pounds of methamphetamine, 
4,400 pounds of cocaine, 16,000 pounds of marijuana and 29 pounds of 
heroin. More arrests are expected.

"These are drugs that were headed for our streets and weapons that 
often were headed for the streets of Mexico," Mr. Holder said. 
"That's why we are hitting them where it hurts the most -- their 
revenue stream. By seizing their drugs and upending their supply 
chains, we have disrupted their 'business-as-usual' state of operations."

Since its emergence as a major player in Mexican trafficking in 2006, 
La Familia has specialized in smuggling methamphetamine, rather than 
cocaine and heroin. The group controls the port of Lazaro Cardenas, 
where many of the precursors for the highly toxic, synthetic drug 
arrive, and it manufactures thousands of pounds of the drug strictly 
for export to the United States.

The cartel's leader, Nazario Moreno Gonzalez, known as El Mas Loco, 
or The Craziest One, has said his aim is to drive other drug dealers 
out of Michoacan and to protect Mexicans from the influences of narcotics.

He carries a Bible along with a book of his own quotes, espouses a 
pseudoreligious philosophy and requires the core members of the group 
to attend church. The organization recruits heavily among drug 
addicts in the state's many drug-rehabilitation clinics, experts on 
drug cartels said.

"What is distinctive about them is they are messianic," said George 
W. Grayson, a professor of government at the College of William & 
Mary. "They justify their actions because they are carrying out 
divine justice."

The group began 25 years ago as a vigilante organization aimed at 
removing the influence of drug dealers in the state of Michoacan, but 
it has evolved into a ruthless cartel itself. For years, members of 
La Familia were allied with the Gulf Cartel, based in Tamaulipas, and 
fought against the Sinaloan gangs for control of the local police and 
officials in Michoacan. But that alliance fell apart in 2004, and La 
Familia has since gone into business for itself. Now it competes with 
both the Gulf and Sinaloa Cartels, and has become a major exporter of 
methamphetamine to the United States, officials said.

"This is an organization that just recently we started calling a 
cartel because of how they've grown and the violence that they 
spread," said Michele Leonhart, the administrator of the Drug 
Enforcement Administration. "And it is the first time we have seen a 
cartel take on meth trafficking, where they are the direct pipeline 
from Mexico to the U.S. of multi-hundred-pound quantities of methamphetamine."

The group first gained attention in 2006 when more than a dozen 
masked gunmen burst into a nightclub in Uruapan and tossed five heads 
of drug dealers on the dance floor, with the message: "The family 
doesn't kill for money. It doesn't kill women. It doesn't kill 
innocent people, only those who deserve to die. Know that this is 
divine justice."

Last July, the cartel's gunmen tried to liberate one of their 
lieutenants who had been arrested, and, when their effort failed, 
they attacked federal police stations in a half-dozen cities. Three 
days later, on July 14, cartel members tortured and killed 12 members 
of the Mexican Federal Police.

In the past year, the Mexican authorities have made some progress 
against the cartel, arresting two capos. But Mr. Moreno Gonzalez and 
his top lieutenants have eluded capture.

One of those lieutenants is Servando Gomez Martinez, who was indicted 
on drug trafficking charges in Manhattan as part of the nationwide 
crackdown. Though Mr. Gomez remains in Mexico, federal prosecutors in 
New York have linked him to a cocaine shipment in the city.

After the murder of Mexican federal officers in July, Mr. Gomez gave 
a recorded statement to a local television station in which he said 
the cartel was locked in a battle with the Mexican police, the indictment said.

Although most of the indictments this week had to do with drug 
trafficking and arms smuggling, federal authorities said that in 
three cases, members of La Familia had kidnapped other drug dealers 
in Houston and held them for ransom, in effect bringing common 
practice in Mexico to the United States.

Mr. Holder said the sweep was intended to support President Felipe 
Calderon in his campaign to dismantle the major drug cartels that 
have wracked Mexico. More than 10,000 people have died in the 
violence in the last two and half years, among them hundreds of 
police officers.

"This is not a one-country problem," Mr. Holder said. "The government 
of Mexico has taken courageous steps to combat the cartels, and we 
stand with them in that fight."
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