A top leader of the Knights Templar drug cartel was killed on Monday in a clash with Mexican marines, officials said.
The officials said Enrique Plancarte died in the central state of Queretaro, but they would not give other details. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the case.
The Mexcian interior department tweeted that Plancarte’s identity was being verified and that it would have more information yesterday.
Plancarte was considered one of four leaders of the Knights Templar cartel, which is based in Michoacan state. The gang has been chased out of many Michoacan towns by vigilante groups that have demanded authorities go after the gang’s leaders.
In recent weeks, Mexican security forces have killed the gang’s top capo, Nazario Moreno, and arrested Plancarte’s uncle and Templars leader Dionisio Plancarte.
Another leader, Servando Gomez, known as “La Tuta,” remains at large.
Earlier on Monday, authorities announced they had arrested another leader of a vigilante “self-defense” force in Michoacan and accused him of participating in the killing of a rival. It was the second such arrest in less than a month.
The arrests come amid a broadening government crackdown on the vigilantes, who took up arms a year ago to fight the Knights Templar. The groups became popular in many towns because they were able to kick out the cartel, whose gunmen had demanded extortion payments from local residents, farmers and businesses.
The vigilantes have demanded that authorities arrest the top leaders of the Knights Templar as a condition of laying down their weapons.
The self-defense groups brought their own form of lawlessness to largely agricultural Michoacan, with rivalries, alleged thefts and possible links to a rival drug gang based in the neighboring state of Jalisco.
Federal government envoy to Michoacan Alfredo Castillo said at a news conference on Monday that Enrique Hernandez Salcedo, the leader of the vigilante group in the town of Yurecuaro, was arrested for illegal weapons possession.
Prosecutors also plan to charge him with ordering the killing of Gustavo Garibay, the mayor of the nearby town of Tanhuato, Castillo said.
Castillo alleged that Hernandez Salcedo organized the March 22 killing of the mayor because Garibay “was opposed to the presence of the self-defense forces in the town of Tanhuato.”
He said authorities had previously detained 14 members of the Yurecuaro vigilante group under Hernandez Salcedo’s command. Five of those, including one who was later found dead, allegedly participated in the killing of Garibay, waiting for the mayor outside his house and attacking him as he emerged.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of