Mexico Extradites Druglords To U.S.

Mexico's attorney general said that four alleged drug lords were extradited to the United States to stop them from communicating with their cartels from behind bars and to reduce the risk of violence and escape, not because of U.S. pressure.

Eduardo Medina Mora said Sunday that Mexico plans to extradite other criminals and suspects who have exhausted their legal appeals. He acknowledged that while Mexico could suffer some backlash, it would not face anything like the war Colombian drug traffickers fought in the 1980s to avoid extradition.

"This decision was a unilateral and sovereign one by the Mexican government," Medina Mora told a news conference. He said the aim was to break any "physical and geographical" contact the extradited drug lords might have had with their gangs while in Mexican prisons.

Friday's extraditions of Osiel Cardenas, the alleged Gulf cartel leader, and 14 others wanted by the United States, also aim to contribute "to the security and control of the various (Mexican) prisons, both state and federal, where these people were being held," Medina Mora said.

The attorney general's comments appear to be a public admission of Mexico's struggle to keep traffickers like Cardenas from running their gangs, or staging escapes and assassinations, from behind bars.

In an interview with the Spanish newspaper El Pais published Sunday, President Felipe Calderon acknowledged that "organized crime was getting out of control ... there was a risk in Latin America that Mexico could become a country dominated by insecurity and violence."

Medina Mora did not give figures on the number of Mexican prisoners who might be extradited in the future, but said that "of course the extradition efforts will continue, and that will happen as the potential candidates for extradition exhaust their legal appeals" against the measure.

Security officials also reported that the largest number of troops in Calderon's broad crackdown on drug gangs — 9,054 federal police and soldiers — are now in the northern Mexico region considered the home turf of Mexico's most-wanted drug suspect, alleged drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, who escaped from prison in 2001.

While the operation, started Jan. 7, aims to eradicate drug crops in the so-called "Golden Triangle" region, Guzman has long been reported to be hiding in the area. Medina Mora said that "efforts to capture this person (Guzman) are continuing and will continue."

Another 4,260 soldiers and police were sent to the western state of Michoacan, and 6,388 were sent to the southern state of Guerrero. While the government found 41 grenades and destroyed 1,625 acres of marijuana in Michoacan, agents found more opium poppies growing in Guerrero: 3,838 small opium plots covering 1,950 acres were discovered and destroyed there.

But it is drug violence that authorities fear most.

In the 1980s, a group of Colombian traffickers — known as "los extraditables" — began a campaign of bombings and assassinations to pressure the Colombian government not to send them to the United States to face justice.

In Mexico, Medina Mora said the extraditions could have "consequences within the (cartel) organizations, which seek to restructure and generate new leaders," but that "we do not expect a response like the one that was seen in Colombia."

Mexico has recently shown more willingness to extradite drug lords, even those facing life in prison. A record 63 alleged criminals were sent to the United States in 2006 alone. However, it refuses to extradite anyone who would face the death penalty, which is illegal in Mexico.

In addition to Cardenas and Palma Salazar, the alleged former leader of the Sinaloa cartel, Mexico also extradited brothers Ismael and Gilberto Higuera Guerrero, former chiefs in the Arellano-Felix cartel in Tijuana.

Also extradited north were 11 alleged criminals wanted on charges including murder, drug trafficking, kidnapping and sex crimes.