MEXICO CITY -- Mexican police arrested one of the country's major drug traffickers who used his own cargo airline to smuggle marijuana and cocaine across the border into the United States, authorities said.
Cmdr. Fausto Valverde, director general of the Federal Judicial Anti-narcotic Police, speaking Wednesday over nationwide television, said agents arrested drug kingpin Amado Carrillo Fuentes in Guadalajara, 300 miles northwest of Mexico City.
Carrillo's operation is believed to have close links to the Colombian drug mafia, police said.
Investigators confiscated six planes, one a Lear Jet 25D, two houses, three cars and six weapons. Authorities said Carrillo's house in Guadalajara was worth at least $1.2 million.
Police also arrested two pilots who flew for Carrillo's airline, Capt. Gerardo Maciel Brunswick and Miguel Meza Lara.
Agents found just under an ounce of cocaine at Carrillo's Guadalajara residence, a police spokesman said.
Valverde said police were tipped off to Carrillo's illicit drug trafficking activities after looking into the operations of his airline company, Aereo del Centro Norte, S.A. de C.V.
Police said the airline did not operate flight patterns considered normal for a cargo service.
'(Carrillo) can be considered a drug trafficker as important as Rafael Caro Quintero, Ernesto Fonseca and Felix Gallardo,' Valverde said in a Channel 4 broadcast.
On April 18, police arrested Caro Quintero, Fonseca and Gallardo, widely considered to have been Mexico's most powerful drug chieftans. The three are currently in prison awaiting trial on drug trafficking charges.
'Amado Carrillo is one of the country's most important drug traffickers because through his close ties with the Colombian mafia he had established various (air) routes to transport narcotics that entered by way of Guatemala,' Valverde said.
The Attorney General's Office said Carrillo confessed 'to dedicating himself to drug trafficking since 1984, when he met known drug traffickers Pablo and Vicente Acosta.'
Carrillo was left to head the drug smuggling gang after the Acosta brothers died in a shootout with the Judicial Federal Police in the northern border state of Chihuahua, authorities said.
After reviewing company files, police arrested pilot Meza for links to the drug smuggling ring. He was arrested in Torreon, 225 miles south of the Texas border. Agents seized six weapons at Meza's residence, the Attorney General's Office said.
Meza said Carrillo smuggled cocaine and that his employees were fully aware of his activities. Police in Chihuahua state started an investigation into Carrillo's activities Aug. 16, authorities said.
