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A federal grand jury in Charlotte has indicted 26 reputed members of an international gang accused in a cross-border drug ring.

One of the men was previously charged with killing two people in a Greensboro restaurant. Greensboro police also helped arrest another man named in the indictment.

Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey unsealed the federal indictment Tuesday that charges members of the MS-13 gang with federal racketeering for forming a drug trafficking ring that sold cocaine, marijuana and narcotics, and of committing multiple robberies. Three of the men indicted face charges for four murders in Greensboro and Charlotte.

Federal authorities said MS-13 is one of the largest gangs in the nation with 10,000 members in the U.S., Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. Investigators said one of the gang's leaders is imprisoned in El Salvador.

The indictment says gang members hold regular meetings much like a government, discussing gang rules, problems and unity. The cliques met frequently in Charlotte, Greensboro, Durham and Columbia, S.C. and elsewhere, and the meetings often brought in gang guests from other states, according to court documents.

Criminal activity, especially directed at rival gangs, increased a member's position in the gang, according to the indictment.

Many of the leaders — often called "shot callers" or "voices" — are in prison in El Salvador, the indictment said. But prosecutors claim gang members paid dues at their meetings and often sent cash to those in prison, at times wiring money at the request of a leader.

The homicides in Greensboro addressed in the indictment are the Dec. 8 shootings of two men at Las Jarochitas, a restaurant at 3738 High Point Road. Brothers Manuel Garcia Salinas, 42, and Ruben Garcia Salinas, 31, were killed.

Police said after the shootings that the two were killed by MS-13 gang members; the brothers were not involved with a gang.

Alejandro Enrique Ramirez Umana was arrested Dec. 12 in Charlotte and charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the case.

Greensboro police also assisted in the federal investigation by finding one of the defendents, Julio Cesar Rosales Lopez, said Sgt. R.H. Sizemore of the Greensboro Police Department.

"He was a key player," Sizemore said. The gang enforcement unit arrested Lopez in May on traffic charges.