Suspect in 20 tourist deaths arrested in Mexico

MEXICO CITY - An alleged drug trafficker suspected of helping abduct and kill 20 Mexican tourists has been arrested in the resort city of Acapulco, federal police said Tuesday.

Moises Montero Alvarez, nicknamed "The Korean," was captured Monday along with a 21-year-old and two teenagers believed to be accomplices. Alvarez is suspected of being a leader in the local Independent Cartel of Acapulco.

20 bodies found in Northern Mexico mass grave

Alvarez, 42, is accused of helping to carry out the Sept. 30 kidnapping of 20 vacationing men from Michoacan state. Some of the men's decomposed bodies were later identified in a mass grave by relatives.

Authorities believe the tourists had been mistaken by drug traffickers for members of the rival La Familia cartel.

Alvarez is also suspected of ordering the killings of rival cartel members at in the port of Acapulco, the kidnapping of police officers and the April 7 burning of a supermarket that left at least one man dead. He was previously arrested in 1999 on extortion charges, police said.

Federal police have reported more than a dozen killings have been reported in the area in the last two days. In one case, a 35-year-old man's torso and right arm found on a busy street near the 23-story beachfront Grand Hotel Acapulco. In another, a taxi was found with the bodies of three men in their 20s killed with assualt rifles.

At least five women in their 30s and 50s were also reported killed in that period, several in outlying areas of the surrounding state of Guerrero. The women were shot and several were found bound with ropes and tape. It is not known if the murders are linked.