Alleged Mexican Drug Kingpin Pleads Not Guilty, DOJ Says Arrest Led to Violent Drug Cartel War

Alfredo Beltran Leyva, allegedly a former leader
of the drug cartel Beltran Leyva Organization,
entered a not guilty plea in federal court in Washington, D.C.
yesterday after being extradited over the weekend from Mexico,
where he was arrested in January 2008. He was indicted by federal
prosecutors in 2012

According to a
Department of Justice release, after his arrest the Leyva
organization blamed another group, the Sinaloa Cartel, for Beltran
Leyva’s capture, causing a “violent war between the two drug
cartels, and the murder of thousands of citizens in Mexico,
including numerous law enforcement officers and officials.”

After his 2008 arrest, the Leyva organization was added to a
“Blocked Persons” list under the Kingpin Act and Beltran Leyva
himself was later “specifically designated…  as a specially
designated drug trafficker under the same Kingpin Act.” The DOJ
insists in the same release that Leyva “is presumed innocent unless
and until proven guilty.”

Beltran Leyva’s entered his not guilty plea through a public
defender, according to
the Washington Post, but says his family will provide
him a lawyer. Beltran Leyva’s 2008 arrest did nothing to stem the
flow of narcotics across the Americas, but it did, by the
Department of Justice’s own admission, increase the level of
drug-related violence in Mexico, an expected consequence of a drug
war offensive.