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MEXICO CITY - Mexico, striking back at violent drug cartels, will push on with a programme to send imprisoned traffickers to the United States after extraditing four drug bosses, the attorney general said today.
The Mexican government flew four major traffickers, including suspected Gulf cartel boss Osiel Cardenas, to the United States on Saturday.
President Felipe Calderon, who took office on Dec. 1, quickly stepped up Mexico's fight again warring smugglers who killed 2,000 people last year. He has deployed thousands of troops to try to wrest control from cartels that have been operating freely in some parts of the country.
Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora said more imprisoned traffickers would be sent to the United States for trial. Drug leaders held in Mexican prisons often run their cartels from behind bars, making extradition vital to cutting their power.
Anticipating a power struggle among drug gangs seeking to fill a vacuum left by the extraditions, Medina Mora told reporters, "The Mexican state is perfectly prepared to face any type of reaction that could occur."
He said experience showed Mexico was unlikely to see the type of chaotic backlash that forced the Colombian government to abandon extraditions in the 1990s.
Several regions in Mexico, including Calderon's home state of Michoacan in western Mexico, have been engulfed by violence as rival drug gangs fight over smuggling routes.
"Organized crime is getting out of control and is causing serious worries in some regions of the country, like Michoacan," Calderon told the Spanish newspaper El Pais in an interview published on Sunday.
Calderon said murder rates in the state were down 70 per cent since he sent in 7,000 troops and police last month.
In many areas, the gangs have more money and firepower than local authorities and operate with impunity, even in cities like coastal resort Acapulco, where last year traffickers fought daylight gunbattles and beheaded rivals, including police.
Last year, 63 criminals were extradited from Mexico, but there was only one expulsion of a high-profile drug lord, Francisco Rafael Arellano Felix.
Medina Mora did not give the names of traffickers targeted for extradition, but government news agency Notimex said the list included Luis and Jesus Amezcua.
The Amezcua brothers were arrested in Mexico in 1998 and are accused by US authorities of heading North America's largest methamphetamine smuggling gang.
The government crackdown is popular in Mexico and with Washington, but crime experts warn the drive will fail unless it also tackles corruption that keeps police and justice officials on the cartels' payroll.
Few major arrests have been made since the offensive started in December.
- REUTERS
