Mexico hails arrest as final blow to most violent of its drug cartels

The arrest of the drug cartel leader Benjamin Arellano Felix and the recent death of his brother Ramon, its enforcer, marks the end of an era of drug trafficking in Mexico.

Benjamin Arellano Felix, 49, was detained on Saturday at a house in suburban Puebla, where he had been lying low for several months.

He is considered the brains behind the family drug trafficking business, based in Tijuana, just across the border from San Diego, California, held to control a quarter of the cocaine entering the US, and smaller amounts of heroin and marijuana.

The house where he was arrested contained an altar to brother Ramon, the chief executioner of the country's bloodiest gang, who is thought to have died in a gun battle with police officers last month in the Pacific resort of Mazatlan.

He was reported to have been on a mission to eliminate an arch-enemy from another cartel, using false police identification, when he was intercepted and shot dead by local police officers.

Confirmation of his death was complicated by the disappearance of his body from the mortuary, and its hurried cremation, leading to speculation that he was still at large.

The attorney general, Rafael Macedo de la Concha, told a press conference that the cartel had been "totally dismantled".

In Washington the head of the drug enforcement administration, Asa Hutchinson, said: "I consider this a great victory that will have long-lasting results."

Two dozen suspected members of the cartel were arrested in the US on Friday, officials said.

Benjamin and Ramon, who took over the leadership of the cartel in 1989, controlled the Pacific corridor route for mainly Colombian cocaine and raised their cartel to a level of influence equal to that of the Juarez cartel, based in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from Texas.

Like the other cartels, the Arellano Felix cartel spent millions buying protection, but with the bloodthirsty Ramon in charge of enforcement it also gained the reputation of being the most inclined to shore up the bribes with violence: a strategy known in Spanish as plata o plomo - bribes or bullets.

A picture of Ramon, who is said to have been responsible for hundreds of deaths remains on the the FBI's website page of 10 most-wanted fugitives, next to Osama bin Laden.

His death has still not been officially confirmed, though Mr Macedo de la Concha said Benjamin Arellano Felix had confirmed it when he was questioned after his arrest.

The US government offered a $2m reward for the brothers' capture.

Experts are wary of predicting the cartel's collapse: there are several more Arellano Felix brothers and other experienced traffickers in its ranks.

And nobody expects the arrests to stem the flow of illegal drugs from Mexico into the US.

Mexico's other gangs are likely to try to take advantage of the situation to muscle in on Arellano Felix territory, leading many to predict that there will now be a bloody power struggle.

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