Paul Krugman joined The New York Times in 1999 as a columnist on the Op-Ed Page and continues as professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton University.
Mr. Krugman received his B.A. from Yale University in 1974 and his Ph.D. from MIT in 1977. He has taught at Yale, MIT and Stanford. At MIT he became the Ford International Professor of Economics.
Mr. Krugman is the author or editor of 20 books and more than 200 papers in professional journals and edited volumes. His professional reputation rests largely on work in international trade and finance; he is one of the founders of the "new trade theory," a major rethinking of the theory of international trade. In recognition of that work, in 1991 the American Economic Association awarded him its John Bates Clark medal, a prize given every two years to "that economist under forty who is adjudged to have made a significant contribution to economic knowledge." Mr. Krugman's current academic research is focused on economic and currency crises.
At the same time, Mr. Krugman has written extensively for a broader public audience. Some of his recent articles on economic issues, originally published in Foreign Affairs, Harvard Business Review, Scientific American and other journals, are reprinted in Pop Internationalism and The Accidental Theorist.
On October 13, 2008, it was announced that Mr. Krugman would receive the Nobel Prize in Economics.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Monday, August 1, 2011
18 Killed in Ancient Chinese City of Kashgar in Xinjiang
BEIJING — A weekend of violence in China’s far western Xinjiang region has left at least 18 people dead in the ancient city of Kashgar, state-controlled media reported Sunday. It was the second major episode of violence in the last several weeks in an area racked by ethnic tensions.
The police in Kashgar killed five suspects Sunday after “a group of armed terrorists” stormed into a restaurant in the city center, killing the owner and a waiter and then setting the restaurant on fire, the Kashgar city government said in two statements on its Web site, according to The Associated Press. They then ran out of the restaurant and stabbed civilians indiscriminately, leaving another four people dead and 12 injured, it said.
Earlier, Xinhua quoted local sources as saying that two civilians and one police officer had died, either from a bomb explosion or from an attack by “rioters.”
Those deaths followed a Saturday night attack, which was reported as being carried out by knife-wielding assailants, in which seven people died.
Two Kashgar residents contacted by telephone late Sunday said that the city appeared calm and that traffic was flowing normally.
The government media offered no explanation for any of the killings. But there have been repeated outbreaks of violence in Xinjiang in recent years, often the result of tensions between ethnic Uighurs and the country’s majority ethnic group, the Han, who have steadily moved into the area, dominated its economic activity and placed curbs on the Uighurs’ Islamic practices.
Chinese authorities blamed Uighur separatists for an attack in Kashgar three years ago that killed 16 people. Less than a year later, ethnic rioting erupted in Xinjiang’s capital, Urumqi, leaving almost 200 people dead. Two weeks ago, 18 people died after rioters in a predominantly Uighur district of Hotan, a Xinjiang desert city, stormed a police station.
Details of the latest bloodshed, limited to conflicting reports from the state media, were sketchy and could not be independently confirmed. Xinhua said that the violence in Kashgar broke out shortly before midnight on Saturday, about an hour after residents heard two explosions, one inside a minivan and the other along a popular street lined with food stalls. The reports quoted police officials as saying that two men later hijacked a truck, stabbed its driver to death and drove the vehicle to the street of food stalls, where they attacked people with knives.
Seven were said to have died and another 22 were reported injured. The officials were quoted as saying that one of the attackers was killed and the second apprehended.
The second spate of violence occurred about 4:30 p.m. after rioting broke out in an unidentified location in the city.
The police in Kashgar killed five suspects Sunday after “a group of armed terrorists” stormed into a restaurant in the city center, killing the owner and a waiter and then setting the restaurant on fire, the Kashgar city government said in two statements on its Web site, according to The Associated Press. They then ran out of the restaurant and stabbed civilians indiscriminately, leaving another four people dead and 12 injured, it said.
Earlier, Xinhua quoted local sources as saying that two civilians and one police officer had died, either from a bomb explosion or from an attack by “rioters.”
Those deaths followed a Saturday night attack, which was reported as being carried out by knife-wielding assailants, in which seven people died.
Two Kashgar residents contacted by telephone late Sunday said that the city appeared calm and that traffic was flowing normally.
The government media offered no explanation for any of the killings. But there have been repeated outbreaks of violence in Xinjiang in recent years, often the result of tensions between ethnic Uighurs and the country’s majority ethnic group, the Han, who have steadily moved into the area, dominated its economic activity and placed curbs on the Uighurs’ Islamic practices.
Chinese authorities blamed Uighur separatists for an attack in Kashgar three years ago that killed 16 people. Less than a year later, ethnic rioting erupted in Xinjiang’s capital, Urumqi, leaving almost 200 people dead. Two weeks ago, 18 people died after rioters in a predominantly Uighur district of Hotan, a Xinjiang desert city, stormed a police station.
Details of the latest bloodshed, limited to conflicting reports from the state media, were sketchy and could not be independently confirmed. Xinhua said that the violence in Kashgar broke out shortly before midnight on Saturday, about an hour after residents heard two explosions, one inside a minivan and the other along a popular street lined with food stalls. The reports quoted police officials as saying that two men later hijacked a truck, stabbed its driver to death and drove the vehicle to the street of food stalls, where they attacked people with knives.
Seven were said to have died and another 22 were reported injured. The officials were quoted as saying that one of the attackers was killed and the second apprehended.
The second spate of violence occurred about 4:30 p.m. after rioting broke out in an unidentified location in the city.
Bring Back Poppy
WATCHING today’s Republicans being led around by an extremist Tea Party faction, with no adult supervision, I find my mind drifting back to the late 1980s when I was assigned to cover the administration of George H.W. Bush, who I believe is one of our most underrated presidents. I have long admired the elder Bush for the deftness with which he dealt with the collapse of the Soviet empire. But, in later years, I came to admire him even more for the fact that he believed that math and science were not matters of opinion — a view increasingly rare in today’s G.O.P.
Despite having run on the promise of “Read my lips: No new taxes,” when the deficit started spiraling to dangerous levels under his presidency, Bush agreed to a compromise with Democrats to raise several taxes, along with spending cuts, as part of a 1990 budget deal that helped to pave the way for the prosperity of that decade. It definitely hurt his re-election, but he did it anyway.George H.W. Bush also believed in science. How many Republicans know that he and his aide Boyden Gray pioneered the use of cap-and-trade to deal — very effectively — with the problem of acid rain produced by power-plant emissions?
In an article, “The Political History of Cap and Trade,” published in Smithsonian Magazine in August 2009, Richard Conniff details how “an unlikely mix of environmentalists and free-market conservatives hammered out the strategy known as cap-and-trade.” As Conniff explained it, “Gray liked the marketplace approach, and even before the Reagan administration expired, he put [Environmental Defense Fund] staffers to work drafting legislation to make it happen. ... John Sununu, the White House chief of staff, was furious. He said the cap ‘was going to shut the economy down,’ Boyden Gray recalls. But the in-house debate ‘went very, very fast. We didn’t have time to fool around with it.’ President Bush not only accepted the cap, he overruled his advisers’ recommendation of an eight million-ton cut in annual acid rain emissions in favor of the 10 million-ton cut advocated by environmentalists. ... [Today,] the cap-and-trade system continues to let polluters figure out the least expensive way to reduce their acid rain emissions.”
George H.W. Bush also believed that to be a conservative was to act with “prudence,” one of his favorite words and a philosophy he demonstrated in foreign policy by deciding, once he defeated Saddam Hussein in Kuwait, not to follow him to Baghdad.
I find it hard to look at today’s G.O.P. without thinking how far it has drifted from the kind of balanced conservatism the elder Bush brought to politics. Today’s G.O.P. has gone from espousing cap-and-trade to deal with pollution to espousing the notion that all the world’s climate scientists have secretly gotten together and perpetrated a “hoax,” called climate change, in order to expand government — all of this at a time of record heat waves and climate disruptions.
On the economy, the G.O.P. has gone from the magical thinking of Vice President Dick Cheney — who argued that “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter” and used this argument to help run up the deficit to its current astronomical levels with huge tax cuts — to an anti-tax cult that spurned a “Grand Bargain” with President Obama because it would have not only cut $3 trillion in spending over the next decade but also involved $1 trillion in tax increases. Somehow, the G.O.P. has forgotten that even Ronald Reagan didn’t believe deficits don’t matter and he raised taxes when our fiscal stability demanded it. As for prudence today, well, the willingness to risk a default on America’s financial obligations by refusing to raise the debt ceiling may be many things, but it is not prudent.
Where have all the adults in this party gone? Where is Dick Lugar, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Colin Powell, Hank Paulson and Big Business? Are you telling me that they are ready to fall in line behind Michele Bachmann, Grover Norquist, Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin? Are these really the pacesetters of modern conservatism?
I wish President Obama had embraced the Bowles-Simpson deficit reduction plan when it was announced last November and then added his own long-term investment plans on top of it and then built a national mandate for this “Grand Bargain” — before we got to this point. But the president has now embraced such a deal, which is important and constructive, though he needs to spell out this Grand Bargain more emphatically, publicly, repeatedly and specifically.
Because it is the only long-term solution — and it is coming. Either the market will impose a Grand Bargain on us in a haphazard way or we can do it rationally by a Democratic and Republican consensus. The president says that he is ready and that his party is behind him. I hope so. But without a Republican Party that returns to the sane conservatism of the likes of George H.W. Bush — which accepts that both spending and tax increases are, reluctantly, needed to fix our budget and maintain social stability — we’re not going to get even a minibargain, let alone a grand one. It is time for a counterrevolution in the G.O.P.
In Afghanistan, Rage at Young Lovers
HERAT, Afghanistan — The two teenagers met inside an ice cream factory through darting glances before roll call, murmured hellos as supervisors looked away and, finally, a phone number folded up and tossed discreetly onto the workroom floor.
It was the beginning of an Afghan love story that flouted dominant traditions of arranged marriages and close family scrutiny, a romance between two teenagers of different ethnicities that tested a village’s tolerance for more modern whims of the heart. The results were delivered with brutal speed.
This month, a group of men spotted the couple riding together in a car, yanked them into the road and began to interrogate the boy and girl. Why were they together? What right had they? An angry crowd of 300 surged around them, calling them adulterers and demanding that they be stoned to death or hanged.
When security forces swooped in and rescued the couple, the mob’s anger exploded. They overwhelmed the local police, set fire to cars and stormed a police station six miles from the center of Herat, raising questions about the strength of law in a corner of western Afghanistan and in one of the first cities that has made the formal transition to Afghan-led security.
The riot, which lasted for hours, ended with one man dead, a police station charred and the two teenagers, Halima Mohammedi and her boyfriend, Rafi Mohammed, confined to juvenile prison. Officially, their fates lie in the hands of an unsteady legal system. But they face harsher judgments of family and community.
Ms. Mohammedi’s uncle visited her in jail to say she had shamed the family, and promised that they would kill her once she was released. Her father, an illiterate laborer who works in Iran, sorrowfully concurred. He cried during two visits to the jail, saying almost nothing to his daughter. Blood, he said, was perhaps the only way out.
“What we would ask is that the government should kill both of them,” said the father, Kher Mohammed.
The teenagers, embarrassed to talk about love, said plainly that they were ready for death. But they were baffled by why they should have to be killed.
Mr. Mohammed, who is 17, said: “I feel so bad. I just pray that God gives this girl back to me. I’m ready to lose my life. I just want her safe release.”
Ms. Mohammedi, who believes she is 17, said: “We are all human. God created us from one dirt. Why can we not marry each other, or love each other?”
The case has resonated in Herat, in part because it stirred memories of a brutal stoning ordered by the Taliban last summer in northern Afghanistan.
A young couple in Kunduz was stoned to death by scores of people — including family members — after they eloped. The stoning marked a brutal application of Shariah law, captured on a video recording released online months later. Afghan officials promised to investigate after an international outcry, but no one has faced criminal charges.
The immediate response to the violence in Herat was heartening by comparison. Top clerics declined to condemn the couple. Police officers risked their lives to pull the two teenagers to safety and deposit them into the legal system, rather than the hands of angry relatives. And the police reported that five or six girls had fled the city with their boyfriends and fiancés in the weeks after the riot.
After discussing the case, the provincial council decided that Mr. Mohammed and Ms. Mohammedi deserved the government’s protection because neither was engaged, and because each said they wanted to get married.
“They are not criminals, even if they have committed sexual activities,” said Abdul Zahir, the council’s leader.
But so far, their words have not freed either of the teenagers or lent them any long-term security.
Ms. Mohammedi was initially taken to the only women’s shelter in this province of more than 1.5 million people, but the police transferred her quickly to the city’s juvenile detention center, a sun-washed building where about 40 girls and 40 boys sleep in separate dormitories. The police said they had referred the teenagers’ cases to prosecutors.
It was the beginning of an Afghan love story that flouted dominant traditions of arranged marriages and close family scrutiny, a romance between two teenagers of different ethnicities that tested a village’s tolerance for more modern whims of the heart. The results were delivered with brutal speed.
This month, a group of men spotted the couple riding together in a car, yanked them into the road and began to interrogate the boy and girl. Why were they together? What right had they? An angry crowd of 300 surged around them, calling them adulterers and demanding that they be stoned to death or hanged.
When security forces swooped in and rescued the couple, the mob’s anger exploded. They overwhelmed the local police, set fire to cars and stormed a police station six miles from the center of Herat, raising questions about the strength of law in a corner of western Afghanistan and in one of the first cities that has made the formal transition to Afghan-led security.
The riot, which lasted for hours, ended with one man dead, a police station charred and the two teenagers, Halima Mohammedi and her boyfriend, Rafi Mohammed, confined to juvenile prison. Officially, their fates lie in the hands of an unsteady legal system. But they face harsher judgments of family and community.
Ms. Mohammedi’s uncle visited her in jail to say she had shamed the family, and promised that they would kill her once she was released. Her father, an illiterate laborer who works in Iran, sorrowfully concurred. He cried during two visits to the jail, saying almost nothing to his daughter. Blood, he said, was perhaps the only way out.
“What we would ask is that the government should kill both of them,” said the father, Kher Mohammed.
The teenagers, embarrassed to talk about love, said plainly that they were ready for death. But they were baffled by why they should have to be killed.
Mr. Mohammed, who is 17, said: “I feel so bad. I just pray that God gives this girl back to me. I’m ready to lose my life. I just want her safe release.”
Ms. Mohammedi, who believes she is 17, said: “We are all human. God created us from one dirt. Why can we not marry each other, or love each other?”
The case has resonated in Herat, in part because it stirred memories of a brutal stoning ordered by the Taliban last summer in northern Afghanistan.
A young couple in Kunduz was stoned to death by scores of people — including family members — after they eloped. The stoning marked a brutal application of Shariah law, captured on a video recording released online months later. Afghan officials promised to investigate after an international outcry, but no one has faced criminal charges.
The immediate response to the violence in Herat was heartening by comparison. Top clerics declined to condemn the couple. Police officers risked their lives to pull the two teenagers to safety and deposit them into the legal system, rather than the hands of angry relatives. And the police reported that five or six girls had fled the city with their boyfriends and fiancés in the weeks after the riot.
After discussing the case, the provincial council decided that Mr. Mohammed and Ms. Mohammedi deserved the government’s protection because neither was engaged, and because each said they wanted to get married.
“They are not criminals, even if they have committed sexual activities,” said Abdul Zahir, the council’s leader.
But so far, their words have not freed either of the teenagers or lent them any long-term security.
Ms. Mohammedi was initially taken to the only women’s shelter in this province of more than 1.5 million people, but the police transferred her quickly to the city’s juvenile detention center, a sun-washed building where about 40 girls and 40 boys sleep in separate dormitories. The police said they had referred the teenagers’ cases to prosecutors.
Iran to 'rule soon on US spy suspects'
Court to issue verdict on August 7 over two Americans arrested on unmarked border, lawyer says after hearing on Sunday.
Two US citizens jailed in Iran on charges of espionage and illegal entry are expected to receive a court verdict on August 7, their lawyer said after a court hearing in the capital, Tehran.
Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, both 29, were arrested along with Sarah Shourd, 32, on the unmarked border between Iran and Iraq on July 31, 2009.
The verdict is be issued "soon", Al-Alam television, an Iranian Arabic station said, quoting Iran's general prosecutor, following Sunday's hearing.
All three defendants have denied the charges and said they were only hiking in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq.
Dorsa Jabbari, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Tehran, spoke to the lawyer representing the three Americans.
"He expected a verdict to be delivered within a week, but according to a judiciary spokesman the verdict will handed down "at some point in the near future". Their lawyer is confident that the proceedings went his way and that his clients will be freed very shortly. However, this case is a very sensitive one in the Islamic Republic. There has been speculation in the past that the Americans will be released.
"I think the verdict being handed down within a week's time is certainly an optimistic opinion from the lawyer at this stage," Jabbari said.
Sara Shourd had not been summoned to attend the hearing, a sign the lawyer believed to indicate that this his clients could be freed immediately.
Shourd, who is being tried in absentia, returned to the US following her release on humanitarian and medical grounds in September 2010, for which a bail of about $500,000 was paid.
'Happy ending?'
"Since the hearing date coincides with the two year anniversary of their arrest, and it is the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan, I am hopeful that this case has a happy ending," their lawyer Masoud Shafii told the AFP news agency on Wednesday.
"I believe that they are innocent; the espionage charges have no relevance. Even if the court does not accept my defence, the two years they've spent behind bars is punishment enough."
Ahead of the new hearing, the families of the detained issued a statement on Friday in New York, and Shourd used her statement to wish Muslims in Iran and everywhere a blessed Ramadan on behalf of the families of the two men.
"Please, if you could make a little room in your prayers on the eve of Ramadan for my fiancé, my friend and our families, it would mean the world to us," she said.
The trial has been hit by a number of delays since November 6, 2010, when it was postponed to February 6, 2011 over what was termed "an error in the judicial proceedings".
Another hearing scheduled for May 11 this year was cancelled after Fattal and Bauer were not brought before the court, according to Shafii.
Shourd, who did not attend the February 6 hearing, told AFP in Washington that she will not return to Iran to join the other two in the dock.
She said she had sent Iran's revolutionary court a five-page evaluation by a clinical forensic psychologist, who concluded she was at high risk of psychological problems if she returned to face espionage charges.
Strained US-Iran relations
Shafii said he has met Bauer and Fattal only twice, the last time on February 6, 2011 when they appeared in court for the first hearing.
"I still have not met them (for) the lawyer-client meeting that I have requested. They told me that they will inform me and I am still pursuing it," he said.
The US government has appealed for the two men to be released, insisting that they have done nothing wrong.
Iran and the US have no direct diplomatic relations, so Washington has been relying on an interests section at the Swiss embassy to follow the case.
 |
| Sara Shourd, centre, is being tried in absentia following her release from Iran on medical grounds [GALLO/GETTY] |
|
| Sara Shourd, centre, is being tried in absentia following her release from Iran on medical grounds [GALLO/GETTY] |
Two US citizens jailed in Iran on charges of espionage and illegal entry are expected to receive a court verdict on August 7, their lawyer said after a court hearing in the capital, Tehran.
Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, both 29, were arrested along with Sarah Shourd, 32, on the unmarked border between Iran and Iraq on July 31, 2009.
The verdict is be issued "soon", Al-Alam television, an Iranian Arabic station said, quoting Iran's general prosecutor, following Sunday's hearing.
All three defendants have denied the charges and said they were only hiking in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq.
Dorsa Jabbari, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Tehran, spoke to the lawyer representing the three Americans.
"He expected a verdict to be delivered within a week, but according to a judiciary spokesman the verdict will handed down "at some point in the near future". Their lawyer is confident that the proceedings went his way and that his clients will be freed very shortly. However, this case is a very sensitive one in the Islamic Republic. There has been speculation in the past that the Americans will be released.
"I think the verdict being handed down within a week's time is certainly an optimistic opinion from the lawyer at this stage," Jabbari said.
Sara Shourd had not been summoned to attend the hearing, a sign the lawyer believed to indicate that this his clients could be freed immediately.
Shourd, who is being tried in absentia, returned to the US following her release on humanitarian and medical grounds in September 2010, for which a bail of about $500,000 was paid.
'Happy ending?'
"Since the hearing date coincides with the two year anniversary of their arrest, and it is the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan, I am hopeful that this case has a happy ending," their lawyer Masoud Shafii told the AFP news agency on Wednesday.
"I believe that they are innocent; the espionage charges have no relevance. Even if the court does not accept my defence, the two years they've spent behind bars is punishment enough."
Ahead of the new hearing, the families of the detained issued a statement on Friday in New York, and Shourd used her statement to wish Muslims in Iran and everywhere a blessed Ramadan on behalf of the families of the two men.
"Please, if you could make a little room in your prayers on the eve of Ramadan for my fiancé, my friend and our families, it would mean the world to us," she said.
The trial has been hit by a number of delays since November 6, 2010, when it was postponed to February 6, 2011 over what was termed "an error in the judicial proceedings".
Another hearing scheduled for May 11 this year was cancelled after Fattal and Bauer were not brought before the court, according to Shafii.
Shourd, who did not attend the February 6 hearing, told AFP in Washington that she will not return to Iran to join the other two in the dock.
She said she had sent Iran's revolutionary court a five-page evaluation by a clinical forensic psychologist, who concluded she was at high risk of psychological problems if she returned to face espionage charges.
Strained US-Iran relations
Shafii said he has met Bauer and Fattal only twice, the last time on February 6, 2011 when they appeared in court for the first hearing.
"I still have not met them (for) the lawyer-client meeting that I have requested. They told me that they will inform me and I am still pursuing it," he said.
The US government has appealed for the two men to be released, insisting that they have done nothing wrong.
Iran and the US have no direct diplomatic relations, so Washington has been relying on an interests section at the Swiss embassy to follow the case.
Mexico 'drug enforcer admits 1,500 killings'
Officials say detained ex-police officer has confessed to ordering deaths while working for Ciudad Juarez drug cartel.
Mexican police say a suspected drug cartel leader they arrested last week has confessed to ordering the killing of 1,500 people in northern Chihuahua state.
Jose Antonio Acosta Hernandez is also a suspect in the murder of a United States consulate employee last year near a border crossing in Ciudad Juarez.
Felipe Calderon, the Mexican president, said on Sunday that the capture was "the biggest blow" to organised crime in Ciudad Juarez since he first sent about 5,000 federal police personnel to the city in April 2010 in a bid to curb violence in one of the world's most dangerous cities.
Acosta, 33, was caught on Friday in the northern city of Chihuahua, said Ramon Pequeno, head of the federal police's anti-drug unit.
The arrest was not confirmed until Sunday, just before Acosta was displayed to the media in Mexico City.
He was limping as he was brought before the cameras, escorted by two masked federal police officers.
Acosta, who is nicknamed "El Diego", told federal police that he had ordered 1,500 killings, Pequeno announced at the news conference.
Investigators say that he was also the mastermind behind an attack that killed a US consulate employee, her husband and the husband of another consulate worker, in Ciudad Juarez.
US prosecutors say they want to try him in that case, and a federal indictment filed in the western district of Texas names Acosta and nine others as conspiring to kill the three US citizens.
Pequeno said that he expects an extradition request to be filed by the US government.
Mexican authorities have identified Acosta as the head of La Linea, a gang of hit men and corrupt police officers who have been acting as the enforcers of the Juarez cartel.
Pequeno said that Acosta acknowledged that he had ordered such crimes as the detonation of a July 2010 car bomb and a massacre that killed 15 people at a birthday party. Both events took place in Ciudad Juarez.
The Juarez cartel, allegedly led by Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, has been losing ground in recent times to the Sinaloa drug trafficking organisation, headed by Joaqiun "El Chapo" Guzman.
The two groups have been locked in a three-year battle over the border city's smuggling corridors.
Fuentes and Juan Pablo Ledezma, allegedly his top lieutenant, remain at large.
'Hands-on manager'
Acosta is a former state police officer, and built a criminal empire out of leading a gang of contract killers for the Juarez cartel and extorting businesses, as well as carrying out kidnappings for ransom, said Tony Payan, an expert on the drug war at the University of Texas at El Paso.
"This is an enforcer and the financial arm of the Juarez Cartel,'' said Payan, whose research comes from both newspaper accounts and people living in Ciudad Juarez.
Payan said Acosta was able to gather intelligence using informants from within local police forces, given his own past experience with law enforcement.
He said that Acosta's arrest could reduce the number of murders in Juarez, where more than 3,000 murders were recorded last year.
"He was a very hands-on manager that was practically involved in the management and organisation, personally brokering every single activity and every single murder," Payan said.
Mexican police say a suspected drug cartel leader they arrested last week has confessed to ordering the killing of 1,500 people in northern Chihuahua state.
Jose Antonio Acosta Hernandez is also a suspect in the murder of a United States consulate employee last year near a border crossing in Ciudad Juarez.
Felipe Calderon, the Mexican president, said on Sunday that the capture was "the biggest blow" to organised crime in Ciudad Juarez since he first sent about 5,000 federal police personnel to the city in April 2010 in a bid to curb violence in one of the world's most dangerous cities.
Acosta, 33, was caught on Friday in the northern city of Chihuahua, said Ramon Pequeno, head of the federal police's anti-drug unit.
The arrest was not confirmed until Sunday, just before Acosta was displayed to the media in Mexico City.
He was limping as he was brought before the cameras, escorted by two masked federal police officers.
Acosta, who is nicknamed "El Diego", told federal police that he had ordered 1,500 killings, Pequeno announced at the news conference.
Investigators say that he was also the mastermind behind an attack that killed a US consulate employee, her husband and the husband of another consulate worker, in Ciudad Juarez.
US prosecutors say they want to try him in that case, and a federal indictment filed in the western district of Texas names Acosta and nine others as conspiring to kill the three US citizens.
Pequeno said that he expects an extradition request to be filed by the US government.
Mexican authorities have identified Acosta as the head of La Linea, a gang of hit men and corrupt police officers who have been acting as the enforcers of the Juarez cartel.
Pequeno said that Acosta acknowledged that he had ordered such crimes as the detonation of a July 2010 car bomb and a massacre that killed 15 people at a birthday party. Both events took place in Ciudad Juarez.
The Juarez cartel, allegedly led by Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, has been losing ground in recent times to the Sinaloa drug trafficking organisation, headed by Joaqiun "El Chapo" Guzman.
The two groups have been locked in a three-year battle over the border city's smuggling corridors.
Fuentes and Juan Pablo Ledezma, allegedly his top lieutenant, remain at large.
'Hands-on manager'
Acosta is a former state police officer, and built a criminal empire out of leading a gang of contract killers for the Juarez cartel and extorting businesses, as well as carrying out kidnappings for ransom, said Tony Payan, an expert on the drug war at the University of Texas at El Paso.
"This is an enforcer and the financial arm of the Juarez Cartel,'' said Payan, whose research comes from both newspaper accounts and people living in Ciudad Juarez.
Payan said Acosta was able to gather intelligence using informants from within local police forces, given his own past experience with law enforcement.
He said that Acosta's arrest could reduce the number of murders in Juarez, where more than 3,000 murders were recorded last year.
"He was a very hands-on manager that was practically involved in the management and organisation, personally brokering every single activity and every single murder," Payan said.
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