MEXICO CITY — Mexican authorities Thursday announced the capture of Vicente Carrillo Leyva, a suspected top leader of a family-run drug gang based in Ciudad Juárez and one of the country’s most-wanted figures.
Federal law enforcement officials said Carrillo Leyva, the son of deceased drug kingpin Amado Carrillo Fuentes, was arrested Wednesday while exercising in a wealthy neighborhood of Mexico City.
The younger Carrillo was listed among the country’s 24 most-wanted drug suspects last week when the federal government offered $2 million rewards for each. Authorities described him as an heir to the organization once led by his father, who was known as the “Lord of the Skies” for his use of aircraft to move drugs.
The announcement came as U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano were preparing to meet outside Mexico City on Thursday afternoon with top Mexican security officials to discuss how to block southbound smuggling of weapons to drug cartels from the United States.
The arrest of Carrillo Leyva, 32, represents a significant victory for Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s 2-year-old war against drug traffickers. But it leaves in place the younger Carrillo’s uncle, Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, known as “the Viceroy,” as leader of one of the four largest trafficking organizations in Mexico.
Carrillo Leyva, considered the Juárez group’s No. 2 figure, helped manage the gang and launder proceeds from drug sales, authorities said.
Officials said Carrillo Leyva was living in Mexico City under an assumed name, Alejandro Peralta Alvarez. Authorities said they were able to find him in part because his wife, Celia Karina Quevedo Gastelum, kept her name.
The Juárez gang has been locked in a turf war with a band of traffickers based in the northwestern state of Sinaloa and led by Joaquin Guzman, the country’s most-wanted fugitive.
The bloodletting left about 1,600 people dead in Ciudad Juárez last year. Violence continued in the border city across from El Paso during the first two months of 2009 but has dipped since Calderon sent 5,000 more troops and hundreds of additional federal police there in recent weeks.
