Drug suspects extradited

MEXICO CITY — Mexican authorities extradited at least 10 top members of Mexico’s largest drug trafficking organizations to the United States on Friday, including Osiel Cardenas, the leader of the infamous Gulf cartel, officials said.

Arrested in 2003, Cardenas was said to have been running the cartel even while inside a Mexican maximum-security prison.

Mexican officials acknowledged privately that only extradition to the U.S. could stop Cardenas from running his organization.

Cardenas’ extradition was long sought by the Bush administration and came amid a dramatic escalation of anti-drug efforts by the fledgling government of Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who took office in December.

All the suspects arrived in the United States late Friday on flights from Mexico, said Tony Garza, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico.

They were wanted in various federal courts, including district courts in Texas, Colorado and New York. Jose Alberto Marquez Esqueda, said to be a member of the Tijuana-based Arellano Felix drug trafficking organization, was wanted in Southern California, U.S. officials said.

“Today, both the Mexican and the American people can celebrate a monumental moment in our two nations’ battle with vicious drug traffickers,” Garza said in a statement.

He called Cardenas “one of the most wanted, feared and violent drug traffickers in the world.”

In addition, the Mexican government extradited Ismael and Gilberto Higuera Guerrero, brothers and chiefs in the Arellano Felix cartel. Hector Palma, a leader in the rival Sinaloa cartel, was also extradited.

Mexican and U.S. officials hold the men partly responsible for trafficking vast quantities of cocaine, heroin and other drugs to the United States, and for a wave of violence that has killed thousands of Mexicans.

Mexican officials said the men had exhausted their legal appeals.

“This decision is one more example of the firm decision of the government to resist the wave of violence and impunity linked to organized crime,” Mexico’s attorney general’s office said in a statement.

In all, Mexican authorities handed over 15 criminal suspects to the United States on Friday, including five wanted on homicide, kidnapping, rape and other charges not apparently related to drug trafficking.

Cardenas and his allies founded the Gulf cartel in the Mexican border state of Tamaulipas in the 1980s.

It has fought a vicious war for control of the drug trade with traffickers from the western state of Sinaloa, and especially for key border crossings, with Cardenas and his allies said to have recruited elite soldiers and officers of the Mexican army as hit men.

Since his arrest, Cardenas has often mocked his jailers. Last year, he paid for a large, public party to celebrate the Day of the Child in the border city of Reynosa.

Cardenas told the city’s children in a written message: “Stay in school so you can be a good example to others.”