Left: Laura Zuniga is crowned as Miss Sinaloa State in Mazatlan, Mexico, on July 8, 2008. Right: The beauty queen with unidentified gunmen after her arrest in the city of Zapopan on Tuesday. [File photo]

A Mexican beauty queen and international pageant winner has been detained by police along with alleged drug traffickers who had assault rifles and cash.

Laura Zuniga, the 23-year-old Miss Sinaloa from the marijuana-producing Mexican state, was held with seven men at a military checkpoint in Guadalajara, police said on Tuesday.

"She is the beauty queen of Sinaloa and was aboard an SUV with the weapons and several of the men," said a police spokesman from western Jalisco state, home to Guadalajara.

The spokesman said police and soldiers at the checkpoint on the outskirts of Mexico's second-largest city were tipped off that traffickers were moving through the area on Monday night.

"No one expected this young woman to be aboard, along with more than a dozen cell phones, lots of cash, pistols, bullets and two rifles," the spokesman said.

Zuniga won the Miss Sinaloa title in July and was to compete in the Miss International 2009 pageant next year in Asia. She was named "Queen of Hispanic America 2008" in a contest in Bolivia.

One of the arrested men is linked to the leadership of the Juarez cartel, which operates lucrative smuggling routes into the United States, police said. "This young woman was the gentleman's girlfriend," Jalisco state Security Minister Luis Carlos Najera said in a radio interview.

The model is the latest well-known figure to be linked to drug traffickers this year in Mexico, where President Felipe Calderon is battling powerful cartels.

Top anti-drug security chiefs have been accused of leaking vital intelligence. Seven soccer players and football club directors were also arrested in October.

(CRI/Agencies December 25, 2008)