MEXICO CITY | Fri 29 april 2011 3: 04 pm EDT
MEXICO City (Reuters)-Mexico's once-powerful drug Lord Benjamin Arellano Felix extradited to the United States on Friday in a renewed sign of U.S.-Mexican cooperation in the fight against drugs.
Arellano Felix was head of the powerful Tijuana cartel and managed at the Mexico-u.s. border near San Diego, California until his arrest in Mexico at the beginning of 2002.
He faces charges in the United States of smuggling tons of cocaine in California in the 1990s.
A prison sentence in Mexico on charges of organized crime, he had to be extradited in 2008, but a Mexican federal judge blocked that ruling. The order was reversed in April last year.
Mexico's attorney General's office said in a statement that Arellano Felix was handed over to us agents at an airport outside of Mexico City on Friday.
It was not immediately clear what sentence he might be facing in the United States if convicted.
Former Gulf cartel leader Osiel Cárdenas, who was extradited to the United States from Mexico in 2007, is that a 25-year prison sentence in Texas with no chance of parole.
The Tijuana cartel, also known as the Arellano Felix gang, is a shadow of its former self after death and the capture of many of the leaders of the past decade.
The Sinaloa cartel carried out by Mexico's most wanted man, "Shorty" Joaquin Guzman, has its turf.
A cousin of the brothers, Fernando Sanchez Arellano, has emerged as the Tijuana cartel leader, but his power is limited to along with the Sinaloans, u.s. and Mexican drug trade experts say.
Friday the extradition is not expected to affect the drug war that rages in Mexico, in which 37,000 people have died since the end of 2006, but reflects the Mexican and American efforts to continue to work together.
Tensions over the conflict boiled in last month when u.s. Ambassador Carlos Pascual said that he would resign after weeks of pressure from the Mexican Government.
President Felipe Calderon, under pressure in Mexico about his security strategy, are embroiled in a war of words with Washington on U.S. demand for drugs.
American officials have said that the Mexican Government not doing enough to clean up endemic corruption in the police and the courts which averted violence feed.
(Reporting by Miguel Angel Gutierrez)
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