Alleged drug queen Angie Valencia picked up in BA

A former Colombian beauty queen accused of leading a drug-trafficking gang that used models as drug mules, smuggling cocaine to Mexico and Europe, has been arrested in Buenos Aires after evading local police for five months.

Angie Sanclemente Valencia, 30, won the popular title of Colombia's Coffee Queen in 2000, but had become known as the 'Narco Queen' by the Argentine press. She was discovered on Wednesday hiding out in the K-Lodges youth hostel in the Palermo district of Buenos Aires. She was registered under the name 'Annie' and had dyed her brown hair blonde.

Sanclemente had been sought by Argentine police ever since December when a 21-year-old woman known only as 'Maria' was caught with 55 kilos of cocaine in her baggage boarding a flight from Buenos Aires to the Mexican resort of Cancun.

The woman's arrest led to six other alleged gang members being picked up, who apparently fingered Sanselmente as their ringleader.

During her period in hiding, Sanclemente declared her innocence on Facebook. Her mother, Jeannette Valencia, flew in from Colombia some weeks ago to protest her innocence too. "She is no drug trafficker, nor is she the queen of cocaine," she said. "There are bad intentions - a plot against her."

Sanclemente's lawyer, Guillermo Tiscornia, said the former lingerie model and beauty queen had not turned herself in because she feared her looks would expose her to rape or other mistreatment in an Argentine prison. "They will rape her... they will cut her face," her mother said.

Sanclemente comes from the Colombian city of Barranquilla. She won Colombia's Coffee Queen beauty pageant in 2000 but had to give up her crown after only two days when it turned out she was married, which was against the rules.

A report last month by the New Criminologist said Sanclemente had set out to be a journalist. But she idolised the well-known Colombian model Natalia Paris and dropped out of college, spending her tuition fees on silicone breast implants instead. She dyed her hair blonde and even imitated Paris's distinctive accent in an effort to appear more like her.

As result, she picked up some modelling and TV acting work in Colombia and Mexico - and, if her accusers are to be believed, became involved in the drugs trade.

"More women are now head of drug-trafficking cartels after their husband or close relative, who were drug bosses, wound up dead or serving long sentences in prison," the New Criminologist quoted a drugs expert as saying. "These women gradually earned the respect of drug traffickers after showing shrewd attitudes for financial management and money laundering."

New Criminologist reporter Clarence Walker posted a list of the top ten Latin American women drug dealers. Sanclemente, then still in hiding, was number two after the notorious Griselda Blanco, known as Miami's 'black widow' and thought to be responsible for at least 200 murders. ·