A Mexican drug boss has been sentenced to life in prison after he admitted ordering more than 1,500 killings

Jose Antonio Acosta Hernandez pleaded guilty in El Paso, Texas, to 11 charges, including conspiracy, racketeering and murder. Judge Kathleen Cardone sentenced the 34-year-old to seven concurrent life terms, three additional consecutive life terms and 20 years in federal prison. Hernandez was in charge of the armed enforcement wing of the Juarez Drug Cartel, which had formed an alliance with the Barrio Azteca drug gang that operated in Texas and Mexico, to control drug trafficking in Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua, prosecutors said in court papers. Ciudad Juarez has served as a major route for smuggling narcotics into the United States. Among the murders the indictment listed Hernandez, nicknamed El Diego, as participating in, included the March 2010 machine-gun killings of Leslie Ann Enriquez, a U.S. consulate employee in Juarez; her husband, Arthur Redelfs; and Alberto Salcido Ceniceros, the husband of another consulate employee. The U.S. Consulate employee and her American husband were gunned down in broad daylight as they left an event sponsored by the consulate, across the border from El Paso, Texas, while Ceniceros was murdered at around the same time in another part of the city. In his plea agreement Hernandez also confessed to ordering his men to kill members of a rival gang at a January 2010 birthday party in Ciudad Juarez that killed 16 and to directing a car bombing that killed four, including two Mexican police officers. Violence between warring drug gangs as well as with Mexican authorities has plagued the country for years with more than 50,000 people killed since late 2006.