Mexico Vows to Widen Its War on Narcotics Cartels

Mexican prosecutors vowed Tuesday to intensify the war on the nation’s powerful narcotics cartels and the hunt for their chieftains, conceding that Monday’s swift deportation of accused drug lord Juan Garcia Abrego could leave a power vacuum that would strengthen other Mexican drug mafias.

“We are making our best effort to combat not just one of the cartels but all at the same time,” said Deputy Atty. Gen. Manuel Galan. He had been asked in an interview whether drug agents are trying to capture Mexico’s most powerful alleged drug lord, Amado Carrillo Fuentes, who law enforcement officials say already has inherited much of Garcia Abrego’s power.

“If we combat just one, then the others will feel not only free from attack but [become] the beneficiaries of a severe attack on just one of the cartels,” Galan said.

As top prosecutors and opposition leaders here assessed the impact of Monday’s dramatic expulsion of Garcia Abrego, the accused cartel chief, subdued and visibly weakened, appeared in a Houston federal court.

Garcia Abrego, a Texas native, stood quietly before U.S. Magistrate Frances Stacy, nodding and answering simply, “Si,” when asked if he understood the charges against him--a 20-count indictment that alleges crimes ranging from money laundering to murder as the head of a powerful criminal enterprise that grossed billions of dollars by supplying up to 30% of the illicit cocaine and marijuana sold in the United States.

Handcuffed, Garcia Abrego was taken into the courtroom wearing a camouflage jacket and black pants, then was led to a table, where the cuffs were removed. He listened without expression through headphones to a Spanish translation of the proceedings. And he stood motionless, hands clasped in front of him, at the magistrate’s bench as she set his arraignment for Feb. 6.

The accused drug lord then was remanded to the custody of federal marshals, who handcuffed him again.

He is being held in the Harris County Jail.

While Garcia Abrego sampled U.S. justice, officials on both sides of the border sought to answer criticism here that Mexico’s decision to expel the alleged leader of Mexico’s once-powerful Gulf cartel was designed to avoid embarrassing disclosures of official corruption that might ensue if he were tried in Mexico.

Juan Guerra Ochoa, a federal legislator from the opposition Democratic Revolutionary Party, told a Tuesday news conference, “It would seem that they are extraditing him in order not to investigate him, in order not to investigate these links of corruption, or even to cover them up.

“Contrary to the [prosecutors’] statements today that they’re going to investigate corruption, the expulsion is to continue covering up the corruption in our country.”

But Mexican prosecutors said Garcia Abrego’s incarceration in the United States will probably make it easier to pressure him into exposing corrupt Mexican officials, who allegedly received tens of millions of dollars in bribes from the Gulf cartel, according to testimony in U.S. federal court by former cartel members.

Garcia Abrego was deported 19 hours after his capture Sunday night at a residential villa outside Monterrey.

He is charged in three criminal cases in Mexico, but Galan said authorities preferred to see him tried in the United States partly because he faces stiffer punishment--a possible life sentence--if convicted in America.

The unanswered question, Mexican authorities conceded, is whether Garcia Abrego will cooperate with U.S. investigators.

Galan, providing fresh details of Garcia Abrego’s detention and deportation, said the burly, 51-year-old made clear Monday that he did not want to go to the United States.

“He became very aggressive and refused to budge . . . the moment we told him we were taking him to the United States.”

Times staff writers Lianne Hart in Houston and Sebastian Rotella in San Diego contributed to this story.