MEXICAN police arrested the suspected leader of a brutal drug gang called ‘The Hand with Eyes’ and he has confessed to helping carry out or ordering more than 600 murders, authorities said.

Mexican marines captured Sergio Villarreal Barragan, a presumed leader of the embattled Beltran Leyva cartel who appears on a list of the country’s most-wanted fugitives, in a raid in the central state of Puebla, the government said.

A judge has ordered a US-born suspected drug lord known as “La Barbie” to be held for 40 days pending an investigation into organised crime, Mexican authorities said today.

ALTHOUGH we should learn from our mistakes and the mistakes of others, we persist in following the failed tactics of the US in relation to drugs. Our drug problems, which began in Dublin, have gradually spread throughout the country.