Thread: Mexico: Founding member of Zetas is captured

Mexico police: Founding member of Zetas is captured
By OLGA R. RODRIGUEZ Associated Press
Jan. 18, 2011, 11:38AM


MEXICO CITY -- Mexico's federal police have arrested a military deserter who helped create the brutal Zetas drug cartel, a man who controlled drug smuggling routes and the kidnapping of Central American migrants in southern Mexico, officials said Tuesday.

Flavio Mendez Santiago, 35, was arrested Monday night along with a bodyguard outside Oaxaca City. He was in charge of operations in the states of Oaxaca, Chiapas and Veracruz, said federal police anti-drug chief Ramon Pequeno.

Pequeno said Mendez Santiago, known as "El Amarillo" or "The Yellow One," controlled the smuggling of Central and South American migrants and was in charged of moving them to the northern states of Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas, on the border with Texas.

The Zetas are suspected in the disappearance of more than 40 Central American migrants in Oaxaca last month. The travelers were last seen Dec. 16 near the city of Ixtepec along the sun-scorched transit route for thousands who ride northbound freight trains.

The gang also is blamed for massacring 72 migrants in August in the northern state of Tamaulipas.

Mendez Santiago also controlled the main overland drug smuggling routes from Central America, Pequeno said.

Mendez Santiago, a former soldier, was recruited in 1993 by the Gulf cartel and years later served as bodyguard for then leader Osiel Cardenas Guillen.

The federal goverment had offered 15 million pesos, about $1.2 million, for information leading to his arrest.

Formed from a small group of elite soldiers based in Tamaulipas who deserted to work for the Gulf drug cartel, the Zetas earned their notoriety for brutality by becoming the first to publicly display their beheaded rivals.

The Zetas began gaining independence from the Gulf cartel after Cardenas Guillen's extradition to the U.S. in 2006 and finally split from their former bosses last year. They have since been fighting for control of northeast Mexico, the traditional home base of the Gulf cartel.

Also in Mexico: On Monday, gunmen looking to settle a drug gang dispute blitzed a corner store Monday in Monterrey, killing six people, including two apparent bystanders, authorities said.

Four of the victims in the daylight attack were believed to have been peddling drugs from the store in the industrial city, said Monterrey public security spokesman Jorge Domene.

Two other unidentified victims, a man and a woman, were likely bystanders who were in the store when the gunmen got out of an SUV and sent a barrage of gunfire into the establishment to the west of the city’s center.

He said the violence was the result of a turf dispute between drug gangs.

Domene also confirmed that the killing of three brothers at a taco stall in Monterrey earlier Monday was likely linked to a rivalry between drug gangs, bringing to 40 the number of killings in the city related to organized crime in 2011.

Drug cartel turf battles around the country have left more than 30,000 people dead since December 2006.

Mexico City has been spared most of the violence, but police said eight people died in a shootout among drug dealers Sunday in the La Esperanza neighborhood of the city of Nezahualcoyotl, a suburb of the metropolis.




http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/world/7386348.html

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Mexican Gang Kingpin arrested
http://www.alipac.us/ftopict-225030.html