Joaquin El Chapo Guzman

Soldiers on Sunday captured Albino Quintero Meraz, described as a major drug trafficker aligned with Mexico's so-called Juarez cartel who claimed to have shipped as much as a ton and a half of cocaine each month from Guatemala to the United States. At a joint news conference Monday, Defense Secretary Ricardo Vega Garcia and Atty. Gen.

In an embarrassing reversal for Mexican prosecutors, a judge Saturday ordered a former presidential aide freed from prison, saying there was insufficient evidence that he was a mole spying on President Vicente Fox for drug traffickers. The aide, Nahum Acosta, was still behind bars in the La Palma maximum-security prison Saturday evening because of a lockdown declared earlier by prison authorities.

Monday's machine-gun slayings of a legislator and his assistant are the latest in a rash of violent deaths sweeping Mexico's Sinaloa state, which is in the midst of a turf war between rival gangs of drug smugglers. Human rights group Sinaloan Civic Front in Culiacan, the state capital, said Tuesday that there had been more than 240 killings this year, a 20% increase over the same period of 2004. Police have said that at least 80% of the slayings in Sinaloa are related to the illegal drug trade.

A Mexican lawyer who has represented some of the country's best-known drug suspects was shot dead outside his home, authorities said Saturday. Americo Delgado was ambushed Friday evening by at least three men in the city of Toluca, an hour of so outside Mexico City, police said. Authorities did not identify a possible motive. Over the years, Delgado, said to be 81, has represented a number of prominent drug figures, including Tijuana crime boss Benjamin Arellano Felix and Jesus Amezcua, one of the so-called "methamphetamines kings."

Authorities said Thursday that they had arrested the son of one of Mexico's top drug lords, saying he had become a high-level operator of a powerful trafficking group in the northwestern state of Sinaloa. Vicente Zambada, 33, was detained Wednesday in a well-to-do area of Mexico City during an operation by the army and federal agents. He is the son of Ismael Zambada, an alleged drug kingpin in Sinaloa.

Turf wars among drug gangs whose leaders were imprisoned in a crackdown are responsible for a wave of violence in northern Mexico, the country's new attorney general said Friday. Atty. Gen. Daniel Cabeza de Vaca said Mexico's success in putting drug lords behind bars had prompted a bloody scramble for control of the international trade, with some leaders issuing commands from their prison cells.

He appears in a restaurant, picks up everyone's tab, then vanishes with his many guards. He stars in his wedding, government officials among the guests. He is captured, then released. Twice. Or maybe not. Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, Mexico's most-wanted drug-trafficking fugitive, chalks up more sightings than Elvis. He is everywhere, and nowhere, a long-sought criminal always a step ahead of the law, yet always in sight or mind.

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.

Mexican authorities said Monday that they thought they had arrested the leader of the Juarez drug cartel, but later said tests showed it was a case of mistaken identity. The determination that the detained man was not Vicente Carrillo Fuentes dashed hopes of a rare instance of good news for Mexico's anti-narcotics forces amid an upsurge of violence. It was also the second high-profile error in the last two weeks.

A gang of hooded men in green uniforms gunned down 12 people, including two 13-year-olds, in a mountain village in Mexico's Sinaloa state, officials said Thursday. Three other people were slain in another incident in the violence-plagued state Thursday morning, state Atty. Gen. Ramon de Jesus Castro said. The deaths brought to 67 the number of people killed in the western state in just the first six weeks of the year, a police spokeswoman said.