ARREST OF CARTEL'S ALLEGED NO. 2, VICENTE CARRILLO LEYVA, SEEN AS BIG BREAK

The arrest of Vicente Carrillo Leyva, considered the No. 2 leader of the
Juarez drug cartel, is a breakthrough in the Mexican government's crackdown
on drug lords, officials said Thursday.

The 32-year-old suspect, nicknamed the "Engineer," is the son of Amado
Carrillo Fuentes and a nephew of Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, who assumed
control of the cartel after Amado reportedly died in 1997.

Carrillo Leyva's capture came a week after Mexican officials placed
him on their list of Mexico's most-wanted drug dealers and offered a
$2.1 million reward for him.

"He is prominent in the Juarez cartel that's involved in all this
violence in Mexico," said El Pasoan Phil Jordan, a former U.S. Drug
Enforcement Administration official, who had investigated the Carrillo
Fuentes organization.

"This is a major arrest. The Juarez cartel is locked in a bloody war
with the Sinaloa cartel for control of the Juarez-El Paso smuggling
corridor."

A 1999 investigation by the El Paso FBI office led to a U.S.
indictment of Vicente Carrillo Fuentes in connection with several
murders in Juarez.

Authorities have attributed hundreds of deaths and disappearances to
the organization, which took over the trafficking corridor in 1993.

Former President Vicente Fox blamed the Carrillo Fuentes cartel for
ordering the shooting of Chihuahua Gov. Patricio Martinez in 2001, an
attack Martinez survived.

Police in Mexico said they caught Carrillo Leyva early Wednesday while
he was jogging in the upscale Bosques De Las Lomas neighborhood in
Mexico City.

El Paso businessman Jaime Hervella, co-founder of the International
Association of Relatives and Friends of Disappeared Persons, took a
keen interest in Carrillo Leyva's arrest.

"His arrest may be an opportunity to solve some of these cases" of
missing persons in Juarez, Hervella said.

The announcement occurred shortly before high-level Mexican officials
met with U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security
Secretary Janet Napolitano in Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico, to discuss
strategies to rein in the cartels and reduce arms trafficking.

In a statement, the Mexican federal Attorney General's Office said
Carrillo Leyva used the alias Alejandro Peralta Alvarez and described
himself as a businessman.

Marisela Morales Ibanez, of the attorney general's organized-crime
unit, was among the officials who announced Carrillo Leyva's arrest
Thursday at a news conference in Mexico City.

Investigators said a key to finding him was that his wife, Karina
Quevedo Gas telum, had not changed her name to hide her identity. Her
sister, Giovanna Quevedo Gastelum, was married to Rodolfo "Golden Boy"
Carrillo Fuentes, a younger bro ther of the Carrillo Fuenteses,
Mexican authorities said.

In 2004, rivals of the Juarez cartel killed Rodolfo Carrillo Fuentes,
brother of Amado and Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, and his wife, Giovanna
Quevedo, according to the Attorney General's Office's statement.

Some drug investigators believe the couple's shooting death in
Culiacan, Si naloa, Mexico, helped ignite the cartel wars in Mexico.

Carrillo Leyva's father, Amado Carrillo Fuentes, was nicknamed "Lord
of the Skies" because of his use of airplanes to smuggle cocaine. He
had developed ties in Juarez and El Paso, which enabled him and his
lieutenants to live and operate freely on both sides of the border.

U.S. authorities seized one of his airplanes parked at a private
hangar at El Paso International Airport.

Under the leadership of the Carrillo Fuentes family, investigators
said, the cartel extended its tentacles to 230 U.S. cities and 30 countries.

A U.S. federal trial last year revealed a link between the Carrillo
Fuentes cartel and Barrio Azteca gang members in El Paso. Mexican
officials said the Aztecas gang in Juarez worked with the cartel in
that city.

The Carrillo Fuentes brothers stayed at homes in Juarez and El Paso,
and they frequented nightclubs and restaurants.