Pubdate: Mon, 29 Nov 2010
Source: New York Times (NY)
Page: A5
Copyright: 2010 The New York Times Company
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Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Elisabeth Malkin
Bookmark: http://mapinc.org/topic/Juarez
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/Mexico
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Felipe+Calderon

MEXICAN DRUG GANG LEADER CONFESSES TO KILLINGS

MEXICO CITY -- A notorious drug gang leader has been captured and has 
confessed to ordering most killings in the battle-scarred border city 
of Ciudad Juarez since August 2009, including the drive-by shootings 
of a United States consular employee and her husband, Mexico's 
federal police said Sunday.

Arturo Gallegos Castrellon, 32, leader of the gang Los Aztecas, was 
arrested along with two other gang leaders in a Juarez neighborhood 
on Saturday, said Luis Cardenas Palomino, chief of the regional 
security division of the federal police.

Mr. Cardenas said Mr. Gallegos claimed to have ordered 80 percent of 
the killings in the last 15 months. "He is in charge of the whole 
organization of Los Aztecas in Ciudad Juarez," Mr. Cardenas told 
reporters at a news conference in Mexico City. "All the instructions 
for the murders committed in Ciudad Juarez pass through him."

The arrest marked a public-relations victory for the Mexican 
government as it takes aim at the top leaders of Mexico's brutal drug 
cartels, but it offered no guarantee to weary Juarez residents that 
the violence that has claimed more than 2,000 lives in the city this 
year would diminish.

Los Aztecas are a cross-border gang that carries out enforcement 
activities for the Juarez drug cartel, which has been fighting the 
Sinaloa cartel for control over the city, according to Mexican officials.

Mr. Gallegos claimed responsibility for several of the most notorious 
killings in Ciudad Juarez this year, including the shooting death of 
Lesley A. Enriquez, a worker at the United States Consulate in Ciudad 
Juarez who was pregnant, and her husband, Arthur H. Redelfs, an 
officer at the El Paso County Jail.

The couple was leaving a children's birthday party in Ciudad Juarez 
on March 14 to return home to El Paso, when gunmen fired on their 
white S.U.V. Their seven-month-old daughter, who was in the back 
seat, was unharmed.

The husband of another consulate worker was also killed the same 
afternoon, possibly in a case of mistaken identity, as he was driving 
a similar vehicle returning from the same party.

The police did not say why Mr. Gallegos ordered the consulate killings.

In July, Mexican authorities announced that they had arrested another 
gang leader, Jesus Ernesto Chavez Castillo, known as the Camel, who 
they said had told them he had ordered the consulate killings because 
the consulate had given United States visas to members of a rival gang.

But in a statement Sunday, the federal police said that after Mr. 
Chavez was arrested, Mr. Gallegos ordered the killing of his wife 
after she visited him in jail, apparently because he felt Mr. Chavez 
had given the authorities too much information about Los Aztecas.

Mr. Gallegos also admitted to ordering the massacre last Jan. 31 at a 
teenager's party in the neighborhood of Villas del Salvarcar because 
he thought members of a rival gang were there, the police said. 
Fifteen people were killed, and the episode shocked the city and 
forced President Felipe Calderon to acknowledge that innocent people 
were being caught up in the drug war's carnage.

Over the past year, the Mexican government has had several notable 
successes against the drug cartels, arresting or killing top leaders 
of the Beltran Leyva drug trafficking organization, and a 
high-ranking leader of the Sinaloa cartel. Most recently, marines 
surrounded and killed Antonio Ezequiel Cardenas Guillen, a top leader 
of the Gulf cartel in Matamoros on Nov. 5.

Since then, fighting between drug gangs along the border west of 
Matamoros has sent hundreds of people fleeing from their homes.

A flurry of polls released this week show that, for the first time 
since Mr. Calderon began his crackdown against drug cartels four 
years ago, a majority of the public no longer has confidence in the 
government's strategy. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake