Mexican drug baron captured while jogging
Updated on 02 April 2009
A notorious Mexican drug baron has been captured while out jogging.
Vicente Carrillo Leyva, 32, is the leader of the Juarez cartel in the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez - the country's most violent town where 6,300 people have died in a brutal turf war.
He was seized while exercising in a park in an upscale residential district of Mexico City and was paraded in front of the media still wearing his white tracksuit.
Carrillo Leyva is the son of Amado Carrillo Fuentes, a drug lord known as the "Lord of the Skies" who flew planes full of cocaine into Mexico in the 1990s and reportedly died in 1997 during plastic surgery to change his appearance.
The arrest came ahead of a visit by US Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Attorney General Eric Holder to Mexico to talk about the trafficking of US guns to Mexican cartels.
"His capture marks another significant victory for Mexican law enforcement," the US Embassy in Mexico said.
The Juarez cartel is locked in a bitter war with smugglers from the northwestern state of Sinaloa for control of smuggling routes into Texas. Last month, fighting forced the government to send 5,000 extra troops into Ciudad Juarez.
Mexico's government had put a $2 million (£1.4m) reward on Carrillo Leyva's head in a list of dozens of top drug smugglers made public last month. He was one of two members of the Juarez cartel listed.
The drug war has turned into a huge challenge for Mexican President Felipe Calderon and is starting to frighten investors away from the north of the country.
Later this month, US President Barack Obama will visit Mexico following a March trip by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Washington is deeply concerned the spiralling drug violence could spill over the US border.
The US government has pledged to ramp up border security and while in Mexico last week, Mrs Clinton said the delivery of some $1.4 billion (£951m) of drug-detection equipment promised to Mexico and Central America under a 2007 agreement needs to be speeded up.
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