Mexican 'drug queen' has Botox in prison

Bars and barbed wire couldn't keep a reputed Mexican drug cartel "queen" from getting Botox in prison.

Mexico City's prison authority says a doctor was improperly admitted to Santa Martha Acatitla women's lockup last month to perform what it called a "procedure not authorised for inmates". City prosecutors later said that the doctor gave a Botox injection to Sandra Avila Beltran, a purported top decision-maker in the Sinaloa cartel better known as the "Queen of the Pacific".

Ms Avila Beltran has been in custody since 2007 on suspicion of conspiracy to traffic drugs, money laundering and organised crime. A judge acquitted her of the charges in December, but prosecutors are appealing against that ruling.

She also faces possible extradition to the United States in connection with the 2001 seizure of more than nine tonnes of US-bound cocaine on board a fishing vessel in the port of Manzanillo, on Mexico's west coast.

Ms Avila Beltran denies the allegations and says she made her money selling clothes and renting houses.

At the time of her arrest, her boyfriend was the suspected Colombian trafficker Juan Diego Espinoza Ramirez. Prosecutors said Ms Avila Beltran spent more than a decade working her way to the top of Mexico's drug trade, seducing several notorious kingpins and uniting Colombian and Mexican gangs.