Mexico gives US its most wanted

Freer extradition of drug fugitives after years of mutual mistrust has created 'a universal fabric deterrence in the region'.

Jesus "Chuy" Labra Aviles, left, is one of 10 members of drug-trafficking gangs who were handed over to the US by Mexico last year.

DENVER // Most were cocaine traffickers. Some fled over the border to escape charges of rape or child molestation. There were accused murderers, people smugglers and money launderers. In all, Mexico and the United States swapped 127 fugitives in 2008, a record number of extraditions between two neighbours that heralds a new era of co-operation in fighting cross-border crime, especially narcotics trafficking. Among the most wanted fugitives handed over to the United States last year were 10 lieutenants of Mexican and South American drug cartels, including Jesus "Chuy" Labra Aviles, a senior partner in the violent Tijuana-based Arellano-Felix organisation, and Juan Carlos de la Cruz Reyna, a member of the ruthless Gulf Cartel, US authorities said. "Due to the excellent collaboration between our governments, people on both sides of the border are safer with these dangerous fugitives off the street," Tony Garza, the US ambassador to Mexico, said in a statement. Drug-fuelled violence and corruption cost more than 5,000 lives south of the Rio Grande last year as rival cartels battled it out in border cities and brazenly assassinated dozens of Mexican police officials. US authorities have watched crime related to the Mexican drug war spill into US territory, some of it stretching into cities far north of the border. The widening violence added fresh urgency to a belief in Washington that the two countries, which for decades maintained an uneasy, sometimes even hostile, relationship over law enforcement issues, needed to iron out their differences. US officials say the new level of co-operation achieved between the United States and Mexico has reversed years of mistrust and working at cross purposes. Before that, Mexican officials decried what they described as Washington's interference in their national sovereignty. And US officials accused Mexico of endemic and high-level corruption - a point brought home in November when it was revealed that the country's anti-drug tsar was getting a monthly payoff of US$450,000 (Dh1.7 million) to protect the very drug cartel he was charged with hunting down. US officials and analysts said the tide turned when Felipe Calderón, a conservative-leaning politician, became president in 2006. "Right now there is a Mexican government that is very dedicated," said Bobby Charles, a former director of the state department's International Bureau of Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. "What you are beginning to find is that there is greater extradition co-operation that has borne real results." Extradition was first implemented in Colombia as a tool to fight massive loads of cocaine being smuggled to the United States by the Cali and Medellin cartels. The programme began to show fruit around the turn of the millennium, former US officials said, when dozens of smugglers were being extradited from Colombia every month, and it became clear that fear of extradition had become a major deterrent to other would-be smugglers. The vast majority of Colombian traffickers extradited received stiff jail sentences in the United States, and many are still serving time. Similar programmes were later successfully implemented in Bolivia and Peru. Part of the success, US officials said, comes from the fact that the extradition programmes work both ways. In 2007 and 2008, for example, Mexico saw the return of gang members who fled north of the border to escape justice at home. The United States located a US dentist accused of anaesthetising a young patient and then raping her while she was unconscious. The programme also allowed Mexico City to export to the United States powerful captured drug lords who might have been able to buy off Mexico's poorly paid police and prison guards to escape. "It created a universal fabric of deterrence in the region," Mr Charles said. [e-mail]