Mexican federal police have arrested a founding member of the brutal Zetas drug cartel, a man who controlled drug smuggling routes and the kidnapping of Central American migrants in southern Mexico, officials said on Tuesday.
Flavio Mendez Santiago, 35, was arrested along with a bodyguard outside Oaxaca City. He was in charge of operations in the states of Oaxaca, Chiapas and Veracruz, Mexican federal police anti-drug chief Ramon Pequeno said.
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 on Dec. 16 near the city of Ixtepec, along the sun-scorched transit route for thousands who ride northbound freight trains.
The gang is blamed for massacring 72 migrants in August last year 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 government had offered 15 million pesos (US$1.25 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 US 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.
That fight raged on Tuesday.
Five mutilated bodies were dumped in the central plaza of the small town of Montemorelos southwest of the industrial city of -Monterrey, according to -spokesman for Nuevo Leon public safety department, which oversees police.
The severed head of one was left on top of a message threatening a rival gang, the spokesman said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the events. The text of the message was not revealed.
Two explosive devices also were detonated later in the evening on Tuesday in front of police buildings, including in the small town of Linares about 24km from Montemorelos and in the San Nicholas suburb of Monterrey. There were no injuries.
In Linares, a grenade was left in a car, causing damage to the police chief’s SUV, local police officer Angel Ramirez said.
‘CROSSING THE LINE’: China’s embassy in Seoul criticized US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson, asking if his ‘hostile’ remarks were authorized by Washington South Korea and the US are in talks over recent public remarks by the commander of US Forces Korea, Seoul’s presidential office said yesterday, after the comments drew sharp criticism from China. In a recent podcast interview, US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson described South Korea as “the dagger in the heart of Asia” from China’s east coast, prompting the Chinese embassy in Seoul to say that he had “truly crossed the line.” The interview came amid growing speculation that Washington might seek to expand the role of US Forces Korea in countering the growing regional influence of China, a key
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
Australian researchers have trained lab-grown brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the 1990s shooter game Doom and said they are just scratching the surface of what the neurons could be capable of doing. It is the science-fiction work of biotech boffins at Cortical Labs, who researched and developed the technology that harnesses the workings of the brain’s networking system. Each so-called “biological computer” contains about 200,000 living human brain cells, grown from stem cells that were harvested from blood donations. Having mastered the simple computer game Pong, where a paddle is moved up and down to send a ball
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
RSS