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Source: DTN News / AFP
ollars from the United States, in a first interrogation video released here.US-born Edgar Valdez, alias "the Barbie" for his fair complexion, was captured this week, in a major coup for the Mexican government as it struggles to contain raging drug violence.
Valdez, 37, was a key lieutenant of Arturo Beltran-Leyva, who headed the Beltran-Leyva cartel and was Mexico's third most wanted man until his December 2009 death in a military operation. Mexican justice officials on Wednesday interrogated "the Barbie" and were set to decide whether he would be sent to the United States, where he has been indicted in several drug trafficking cases.
US and Mexican officials both offered some two million dollars for information leading to his arrest.
The broad-faced drug trafficker wiped sweat off his face as he replied to questions from a female voice in images released by the attorney general's office late Tuesday.
He said his networks extended to Colombia and he received payments from the United States in dollars hidden in vehicle trailers.
"I have investments in Colombia," Valdez said, "in my field of work."
"Is it drugs?" his interrogator asked.
"Drugs," Valdez replied, adding that they were transported via Panama and Mexico.
Colombian authorities on Tuesday announced the arrest of 11 people linked to Valdez's network and said that leftist FARC rebels from Colombia had delivered up to three tonnes of cocaine to him per month.
Valdez, who headed a brutal assassination squad, said he had always worked alone. But he said he had met Mexico's top drug kingpins, including Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, the country's most wanted man and the head of the powerful Sinaloa cartel.
He also admitted hiding a man accused of shooting Paraguayan soccer star Salvador Cabanas in a Mexico City bar last January, saying: "I put him in one of my offices... for around three months."
Valdez said the assailant, Jose Jorge Balderas, alias "The JJ," had previously been friends with Cabanas, who survived the attack and still has the bullet in his skull.
Mexico has arrested several top drug bosses in recent months, but the military crackdown on organized crime has been accompanied by a spike in violence -- more than 28,000 people have been killed in suspected drug attacks since 2006.
A top US drug official lauded the latest capture in Mexico City Wednesday, while underlining the need to stem the violence.
"The level of violence here remains quite disturbing so we're focused not just on the capture of individuals but on the work with our Mexican counterparts to remove these organizations and to take them apart," said David Johnson, from the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.
Valdez was thought to have been involved in a power struggle to replace Beltran-Leyva after the gang was dealt a severe blow with their leader's death last December, followed by the arrest of his younger brother, Carlos.
Born in the Texan border city of Laredo, Valdez was responsible for dozens of brutal deaths in central Mexico and near the Pacific beach resort of Acapulco in recent months, according to Mexican authorities.
In his interrogation, Valdez said he had commissioned a movie relating his life story, for 200,000 dollars, but that he had not seen it finished.
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