By
The Associated Press
MEXICO CITY - A Mexico City judge has convicted the leader of one of Mexico's biggest drug organizations on drug trafficking charges and sentenced him to 17 years in prison.
Juan Jose Quintero, 58, is the uncle of convicted drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero, who is also serving a 40-year sentence for the 1985 slaying of a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent.
Quintero, arrested in 1999, was convicted and sentenced Friday. He was acquitted of organized crime charges, the newspaper Reforma said, and may yet appeal the drug conviction.
Prosecutors say Quintero was an important figure in the Juarez-based drug organization, which was led by Amado Carillo Fuentes until his death in 1997.
Quintero's conviction came as the Mexican government named a former electoral court judge, Estuardo Mario Bermudez, as the country's top anti-drug prosecutor and assigned one of its most experienced prosecutors, Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, to the federal organized-crime office.
At the end of a two-day visit to Mexico, DEA Administrator Donnie Marshall said almost one-half of the 15 to 20 international drug cartels are Mexican. Drug lords based here control a series of cells that operate in the United States, Marshall told Reforma.
There are seven or eight large Mexican drug gangs, and the largest continue to operate from Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez, Marshall said.
