Mexico arrests drug hitman behind U.S kidnap case

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican police have arrested a top drug gang hitman suspected of being involved in the still unsolved December 2008 abduction of U.S. anti-kidnap expert Felix Batista, the government said on Saturday.

German Torres, 29, was arrested in Mexico City on Friday. He is believed to be a founding member of the feared "Zetas" wing of the powerful Gulf cartel that dominates drug smuggling from northeastern Mexico into Texas.

The public security ministry said Torres was also thought to be involved in the kidnapping of Batista, a Cuban-American credited with negotiating past releases of hostages held by Colombian rebels, in the northern city of Saltillo on December 10.

Investigators ran DNA tests in February on charred bodies found in the surrounding state of Coahuila but have yet to confirm whether Batista was among them.

The Coahuila state attorney general's office declined to comment on its investigation into Batista, who disappeared after he apparently stepped outside a restaurant alone after answering a cell phone call.

Separately in Coahuila, suspected drug hitmen killed the police chief of Piedras Negras, a town on the Texas border, after less than three weeks in the job, local media reported.

Arturo Navarro, a former army colonel, was shot in his vehicle in the early hours of Saturday, Zocalo and El Norte newspaper websites said. Police declined to comment.

Nearly 2,000 people have been killed so far this year in Mexico, and 6,300 people died last year, in an escalating drug gang conflict that is worrying Washington as it starts to spill over into U.S. cities like Phoenix and Tucson.

U.S. President Barack Obama visited Mexico this month and praised his Mexican counterpart Felipe Calderon for his army-led crackdown. But Calderon faces a stiff challenge in cleansing police forces of officers who openly aid drug gangs, while reports of rights abuses by soldiers are rising.