Vicente Zambada, son of one of Mexico's top drug kingpins and allegedly a major operator in his own right, was extradited Thursday to the United States, where he will stand trial on federal trafficking charges, authorities in both countries said.

Federal agents arrested Zambada in March of last year in an affluent neighborhood in southern Mexico City.

Competing Mexican drug cartels are destroying each other ... and that's where 'Warrior' begins ...."
http://www.warriorthemovie.com
http://www.warriorthemovie.blogspot.com

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-208917617001990565&q=warrior+mexican+OR+drug+OR+cartels+duration%3Ashort+genre%3AMOVIE_TRAILER

"the action adventure fantasy feature film "Warrior" ... about the son of a divine force ... is a story of a young man's quest to find his true identity set against the twin backdrops of Native American folklore and the treacherous Mexican drug trade and a portrayal of the classic confrontation between "good and evil" ... filmed in the exotic jungles of Costa Azul in the State of Nayarit and the urban grit of Puerto Vallarta in the State of Jalisco, Mexico .. with action, adventure, romance, comedy, a multi-ethnic cast, a major movie studio music score and spectacular cinematography ..."

Zambada, 34, was flown to Chicago and will be arraigned on Tuesday before U.S. District Judge Ruben Castillo.

Federal agents arrested Zambada in March of last year in an affluent neighborhood in southern Mexico City. He was picked up along with five heavily armed bodyguards. He has been held in a maximum-security prison in the northern border state of Tamaulipas and on Thursday was handed over to U.S. authorities at the border crossing at Brownsville, Texas.

Zambada is the son of Ismael Zambada, who along with Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, heads the so-called Sinaloa cartel, the oldest and largest of Mexico’s drug-smuggling networks. Both older men are fugitives, with multimillion-dollar bounties on their heads. Mexican authorities say Ismael had designated Vicente, alias El Vicentillo, to oversee operations, logistics and security, moving him into the upper tier of cartel management.

He was one of the emerging crop of “narco-juniors” in Mexico, the well-dressed, university-educated offspring of the traditional capos.

The Sinaloa-based traffickers are responsible for the shipment of hundreds of pounds of cocaine and heroin into the U.S. every year, authorities say. 

The U.S. and Mexico used Thursday’s extradition to praise improved cooperation between the two governments. Mexico under President Felipe Calderon has extradited a record number of Mexican suspects to the U.S., reversing a long-held resistance to the practice by sovereignty-conscious Mexican officials.

"Jesus Vicente Zambada-Niebla is believed to be one of the most significant Mexican drug defendants extradited from Mexico to the United States since Osiel Cardenas Guillen, the accused leader of the notorious Gulf Cartel, was extradited in 2007," the U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement, using the younger Zambada's full name.

Zambada was indicted last August in Chicago, along with nearly three dozen co-defendants, as part of what was called the largest international narcotics conspiracy case in federal Northern district of Illinois. Separate federal charges are pending in the District of Columbia.

— Tracy Wilkinson in Mexico City

Photo: Vicente Zambada on the day of his arrest last year. Credit: El Universal newspaper.

More in: Crime, Drug Trade, Latin America, Mexico

Cecilia Sanchez in The Times' Mexico City Bureau contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times

br />

Relatives of one of the slain teens mourn their loss. (Jesus Alcazar / AFP/Getty Images / January 31, 2010)

As Mexican teens celebrate school soccer win, gunmen open fire

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-mexico-shooting1-2010feb01,0,1817922,print.story

Competing Mexican drug cartels are destroying each other ... and that's where 'Warrior' begins ...."
http://www.warriorthemovie.com
http://www.warriorthemovie.blogspot.com

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-208917617001990565&q=warrior+mexican+OR+drug+OR+cartels+duration%3Ashort+genre%3AMOVIE_TRAILER

"the action adventure fantasy feature film "Warrior" ... about the son of a divine force ... is a story of a young man's quest to find his true identity set against the twin backdrops of Native American folklore and the treacherous Mexican drug trade and a portrayal of the classic confrontation between "good and evil" ... filmed in the exotic jungles of Costa Azul in the State of Nayarit and the urban grit of Puerto Vallarta in the State of Jalisco, Mexico .. with action, adventure, romance, comedy, a multi-ethnic cast, a major movie studio music score and spectacular cinematography ..."

latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-mexico-shooting1-2010feb01,0,3479327.story
latimes.com
MEXICO UNDER SIEGE

As Mexican teens celebrate school soccer win, gunmen open fire
Fourteen people are killed in Ciudad Juarez during a party in a private home, the latest victims of the drug war. More than 3,700 people have been slain in two years in this violent area of Mexico.

By Ken Ellingwood

February 1, 2010
Reporting from Mexico City

Gunmen stormed a party packed with teenage revelers in Ciudad Juarez early Sunday, killing at least 14 people in the latest spasm of violence to slam the border city, authorities said.

Officials in the northern state of Chihuahua said high school students and others were at a private home celebrating a school soccer victory when armed men rolled up in seven vehicles and opened fire.

At least eight of the dead were younger than 20, officials said. The youngest confirmed victim was 13. At least 14 people were reported wounded.

The motive was not immediately clear. But gatherings in Ciudad Juarez and other Mexican cities have been attacked before as warring gangs pursue targets amid a nationwide drug war.

El Diario, a daily newspaper in Ciudad Juarez, reported on its website that one of the slain teens was a witness in a multiple homicide.

Juarez Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz announced a reward of 1 million pesos, or about $76,000, for information leading to the capture of the killers, the newspaper said.

Officials said the dead were scattered across three adjacent homes. Investigators recovered at least 82 bullet casings.

Ciudad Juarez has been the most violent corner in Mexico during the last two years, with more than 3,700 people slain as two drug gangs have waged a ferocious battle for control of the important cross-border smuggling passage into nearby El Paso.

The killings have shown no signs of letting up in the new year.

More than 175 people have been slain in the city already in 2010, according to unofficial tallies by Mexican media outlets.

The stubbornness and severity of the violence in Ciudad Juarez have flummoxed the government of Mexican President Felipe Calderon, which declared a war on drug cartels in late 2006.

Early last year, the government created a force of nearly 10,000 military troops and federal police to patrol the city's streets in an attempt to bring the killing under control while a new local police force was being built. But after a brief dip in slayings, the murder rate soared during the second half of 2009, and the death toll of more than 2,000 topped that of a year earlier.

Last month, the Calderon administration took a new tack. Amid widespread complaints that soldiers were trampling people's rights, the government decided to reduce the army's profile by pulling troops off the streets and sent in 3,000 more federal police officers to carry out patrolling and investigative duties.

Elsewhere in Mexico on Sunday, gunmen attacked a police station with assault rifles and fragmentation grenades in Lazaro Cardenas, killing an officer and two civilians, Mexican media reported.

ken.ellingwood@latimes.com

Cecilia Sanchez in The Times' Mexico City Bureau contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times

br />

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-mexico-prison-riot21-2010jan21,0,4058722,print.story

At least 23 killed in Mexico prison riot

Competing Mexican drug cartels are destroying each other ... and that's where 'Warrior' begins ...."
http://www.warriorthemovie.com
http://www.warriorthemovie.blogspot.com

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-208917617001990565&q=warrior+mexican+OR+drug+OR+cartels+duration%3Ashort+genre%3AMOVIE_TRAILER

"the action adventure fantasy feature film "Warrior" ... about the son of a divine force ... is a story of a young man's quest to find his true identity set against the twin backdrops of Native American folklore and the treacherous Mexican drug trade and a portrayal of the classic confrontation between "good and evil" ... filmed in the exotic jungles of Costa Azul in the State of Nayarit and the urban grit of Puerto Vallarta in the State of Jalisco, Mexico .. with action, adventure, romance, comedy, a multi-ethnic cast, a major movie studio music score and spectacular cinematography ..."

latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-mexico-prison-riot21-2010jan21,0,6027054.story
latimes.com
MEXICO UNDER SIEGE
At least 23 killed in Mexico prison riot
All of the dead in the riot in a prison in the capital of the state of Durango are inmates. The fighting is said to have been between members of rival drug-trafficking cartels.
By Ken Ellingwood
3:35 PM PST, January 20, 2010
Reporting from Mexico City

A prison riot Wednesday killed at least 23 inmates in the northern Mexican state of Durango, which has been the scene of increasingly violent feuding between drug-trafficking groups during the last year.

Authorities said fighting broke out early in the morning between inmates affiliated with rival drug-trafficking groups who were held in the penitentiary in the state capital, also named Durango. The clashes left an undetermined number of inmates injured.

The Durango state prosecutor, Daniel Garcia Leal, declined in a radio interview to identify the rival cartels. But the state has been a battleground between a trafficking group led by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, from the northwestern state of Sinaloa, and a competing gang known as the Zetas.

The same Durango prison was the site of a riot in March in which seven inmates were killed.

Wednesday's violence was the latest bloody episode in Mexican prisons, which are notoriously overcrowded and prone to fights and uprisings over living conditions.

Rioting in a separate prison in the Durango city of Gomez Palacio in August left 20 dead from knife wounds and gunshots. In March, gang brawling in a facility in the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez killed 20.

Mexican prisons have grown more crowded and dangerous as the government carries out a war against cartels, with more than 67,000 drug arrests in three years. The increased incarcerations have often created an incendiary mix by jamming members of rival gangs inside the same prison walls.

The penal facilities also have seen dramatic breakout attempts as drug gangs seek to rescue captured members, sometimes with success.

In May, a convoy of men dressed in what appeared to be police uniforms cruised into a prison in the northern state of Zacatecas and calmly led 53 inmates to freedom as surveillance cameras rolled. Authorities said it was an inside job.

Durango is part of an important drug-trafficking corridor known as the Golden Triangle, which also consists of areas in the states of Chihuahua, a smuggling hub on the U.S. border, and Sinaloa, the cradle of Mexican drug trafficking.

Durango has become one of Mexico's most dangerous regions for cartel clashes, with more than 600 people slain last year, according to the Reforma newspaper.

Among the dead was Agustin Roberto "Bobby" Salcedo, an assistant principal and school board member in the Los Angeles suburb of El Monte. The bodies of Salcedo and five other men were found after they were hauled out of a bar Dec. 30 in Gomez Palacio, his wife's hometown. The killings remain unsolved.

ken.ellingwood@latimes.com

Cecilia Sanchez of The Times' Mexico City Bureau contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times

br />