Police hold fugitive beauty queen

A COLOMBIAN model accused of leading a drug-trafficking gang that persuaded pretty young women to smuggle cocaine to Mexico has been arrested after evading Argentine police for five months.

Angie Sanclemente Valencia had been hiding out in Buenos Aires since December, when airport police caught a 21-year-old Argentine woman with 55kg of cocaine in her baggage boarding a flight to Cancun. That led to arrests of six other alleged gang members who allegedly fingered Colombia's former "coffee queen" as a ringleader.

Argentina's media quickly dubbed Sanclemente the "Narco Queen", but two officials involved in the case said her specific role in the smuggling has not been established. "When they organised the trafficking of cocaine to Mexico, she participated in the meetings," said one of the sources.

Police were able to determine Sanclemente's identity after she drew attention upon her arrival in Argentina, flying first class with a Pomeranian dog, the other official said.

The 30-year-old model was captured in a hostel in the fashionable Palermo neighbourhood, airport police spokesman Maximiliano Lencina said.

Sanclemente, a native of Barranquilla, Colombia, won her country's National Coffee Queen beauty pageant in 2000. Then 21, she was forced to give up her crown when it was discovered she was married at the time, in violation of pageant rules.