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 News from Around the Americas | October 2007 
Mexican Cartel Leader Gets 6 Years in US
 Associated Press
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| | Francisco Javier Arellano Fιlix, captured in August 2006 by the U.S. Coast Guard. (Howard Lipin/San Diego Union-Tribune) |
San Diego - The eldest of seven brothers behind Mexico's notorious Arellano Felix drug cartel was sentenced Monday to six years in a U.S. prison on cocaine charges from a drug bust that happened 27 years ago.
Francisco Rafael Arellano Felix, 57, pleaded guilty in June to one count of conspiring to distribute cocaine and one count of possessing about half a pound of the drug with the intent to distribute it.
He sold it to an undercover narcotics agent at a San Diego motel in August 1980, authorities said. He was arrested while counting cash from the transaction, but fled to Mexico the following month after being released on $150,000 bond.
Arellano Felix, a Mexican citizen, was extradited to the U.S. in 2006 after serving a decade-long sentence in Mexico on unrelated weapons charges.
The extradition came a month after Arellano Felix's younger brother, Francisco Javier, was captured by the U.S. Coast Guard aboard a sport-fishing yacht in international waters off La Paz, Mexico, and taken to San Diego to face drug charges.
The younger Arellano Felix pleaded guilty in September to running a continuing criminal enterprise and conspiracy to launder money and remains in federal custody awaiting sentencing in San Diego.
Prosecutors said he agreed to plead guilty after then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales agreed not to pursue the death penalty.
U.S. authorities have requested the extradition of a third brother, Benjamin Arellano Felix, who was captured in 2002 in Puebla, Mexico, east of Mexico City. He is being held in a Mexican jail.
Another sibling, Ramon Arellano Felix, was shot to death that year in the Pacific tourist port of Mazatlan.
The Arellano Felix cartel emerged as a drug trafficking powerhouse in the 1980s in Tijuana, across the border from San Diego, though its influence is widely believed to have waned in recent years as its leaders have been killed or captured. |
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