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Mexico captures Zetas drug cartel leader
AFP Updated July 16, 2013, 9:00 pm
MEXICO CITY, Distrito Federal (AFP) - Mexican marines have captured the head of the country's ultraviolent Zetas drug cartel, giving the new government its biggest catch as it seeks to rein in violence.
Miguel Angel Trevino, alias "Z-40," was detained in Nuevo Laredo, the northeastern Tamaulipas state city bordering Texas, along with two other people.
"They carried out an important arrest, of Miguel Angel Trevino, in the early hours of Monday," an official from the federal attorney general's office said on condition of anonymity. An interior ministry official confirmed the arrest.
The Zetas are considered one of the most powerful and feared organized crime groups in Mexico, founded by former elite soldiers and known for their brutality. Trevino is an ex-police officer.
Originally, the Zetas acted as the armed enforcers of the Gulf Cartel, but the two groups split in 2010, sparking brutal turf wars in the north of the country.
The Zetas are also engaged in a fight for lucrative drug routes to the United States against the Sinaloa cartel, led by the most wanted man in Mexico, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.
Officials have described Trevino -- born in Nuevo Laredo but who spent part of his life in Dallas, Texas -- as a brutal killer who liked to "stew" his enemies by plunging them in containers of oil and fuel that he would set on fire.
His capture comes eight months after Mexican troops killed his predecessor, Heriberto Lazcano, in a gunfight in the northern state of Coahuila, only to lose his corpse hours later.
After Lazcano was killed, gunmen burst into a funeral home and stole his body, which has never been recovered.
Trevino is the highest-profile drug kingpin detained since President Enrique Pena Nieto took office in December. The US government offered $5 million for information leading to Trevino's capture, while Mexico had pledged a $2.3 million bounty.
Pena Nieto has promised to implement a new strategy against violence, launching a crime prevention program and planning to create a militarized police force.
His predecessor, Felipe Calderon, deployed thousands of troops across the country after he took office in 2006 to crack down on drug trafficking.
While authorities captured or killed two dozen of the 37 most wanted drug capos during his term, Calderon's time in office was marked by a staggering more than 70,000 drug-related murders between 2006-2012.
Stratfor, a Texas-based security consultancy, warned that Nuevo Laredo, which is a Zetas stronghold, could see increased violence in response to Trevino's capture. Analysts say the capture of drug capos often leads to killings because rivals battle to fill the power vacuum.
The Zetas are linked with some of the most gruesome crimes in Mexico's drug war.
In August 2010, police found the bodies of 72 migrants from Central and South America at a remote ranch -- all murdered by the Zetas cartel.
The gang is also suspected of being responsible for the arson attack on a casino in the northern industrial city of Monterrey that left 52 people dead in August 2011.
In another high profile case, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jaime Zapata was killed when suspected Zetas cartel members shot at his car in the central state of San Luis Potosi in February 2011.
And in September 2010, cartel gunmen fatally shot David Hartley, 37, as he jet-skied with his wife, Tiffany, on a lake straddling the Texas-Tamaulipas border.
The gang has also undertaken other activities, including extortion, stealing fuel from pipelines and trafficking migrants. And it has a presence in Central America, with authorities in Guatemala saying it is the main cartel in that country.
However the Zetas appeared to be fracturing last year, with a high-ranking military officer declaring in August that the cartel's leaders were feuding, fueling violence in the north.
The fight for control was apparently settled by Lazcano's death, which allowed Trevino to fill the void.
Mexico's most-wanted drug lord who 'stewed' his victims alive in burning oil barrels is captured with $2million in cash
Trevino Morales, known as 'Z-40' was caught in Nuevo Laredo
Trademark murder method was 'the stew' - burning men alive in barrels
Crimes include murder of 72 migrants in 2010 and massacre of 192 in 2011
Zetas known for brutal crimes in Mexico, including mass slaughters
His arrest is hailed a boon for President Enrique Pena Nieto
By MATT BLAKE and ASSOCIATED PRESS REPORTER PUBLISHED: 05:56 GMT, 16 July 2013 | UPDATED: 13:17 GMT, 16 July 2013
Mexico's most feared and famous drugs baron has been captured driving a pickup truck laden with eight guns and $2million in cash near the US border. Miguel Angel Trevino Morales, the notoriously cruel leader of the Zetas cartel, is behind some of the largest and most gruesome massacres of a drugs war that has claimed the lives of up to 100,000 people since 2006.The 40-year-old, whose trademark method of execution was to burn his enemies alive in oil drums, was snared by Mexican Marines yesterday on a dirt road outside the border city of Nuevo Laredo, which has long served as the Zetas' criminal heartland. The truck was halted by a Marine helicopter and Trevino Morales was taken into custody along with a bodyguard and an accountant, government spokesman Eduardo Sanchez said.
Captured: This mug shot released by Mexico's Interior Ministry on shows Zetas drug cartel leader Miguel Angel Trevino Morales after his arrest
Mug shots: Trevino Morales was captured by Mexican Marines before dawn Monday who intercepted a pickup truck with $2 million in cash on a dirt road outside the border city of Nuevo Laredo
Armed and dangerous: The cartels are armed to the teeth guard their hauls of weapons and ammunition
Sanchez said the Marines had been watching rural roads between the Texas border states of Coahuila, Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas for signs of Trevino Morales, who is charged with murder, torture, kidnapping and other crimes.The Zetas leader and his alleged accomplices were flown to Mexico City, where they are expected to eventually be tried in a closed system that usually takes years to prosecute cases, particularly high-profile ones.
Trevino Morales, known as 'Z-40,' is uniformly described as one of the two most powerful cartel heads in Mexico.
Massacre: Three years ago the bodies of 72 people, believed to all be migrants, were found at a rural ranch in northern Mexico. The victims were shot by the members of the Zetas cartel known for exploiting vulnerable people
Ruthless: Morales, left, as a younger man, is believed to have masterminded the massacre in 2010 after which the killers piled the bodies on top of each other and left them to rot, right
Fear-mongering: Los Zetas gunmen shot dead five people in Apodaca in 2010. Four of the bodies had a message pinned to their chest with an ice pick as a warning to collaborators of a rival drug cartel. One of the messages read, 'This is going to happen to every civilian and policemen that collaborates with the Gulf Cartel'. it was signed Z, referring to Los Zetas cartel
As the leader of a corps of special forces defectors, he went to work for drug traffickers that soon splintered off into their own cartel in 2010 and metastasized across Mexico, expanding from drug dealing into extortion, kidnapping and human trafficking.
BURNINGS AND MASSACRES: MIGUEL ANGEL TREVINO MORALES AND HIS REIGN OF TERROR
Even before rising to leader of the feared Zetas cartel in October last year, Miguel Angel Trevino Morales (pictured), has had a reputation as one of the most ruthless, bloodthirsty and unpredictable drugs lords in the history of gangland Mexico.
He is believed to be responsible, both personally and by proxy, for the deaths of hundreds of immigrant slaves and rival criminals - many of whom died in unimaginable pain.
Reports from within the organization claim that Morales enjoyed driving around the city in a car and pointing at people randomly and saying, 'kill him... kill her.'
He is reportedly responsible of coordinating several violent attacks throughout Mexico, including the murder of 72 migrants in 2010 and the massacre of 193 people a year later in San Fernando, Tamaulipas.
His trademark method of murder became known as the 'guiso', meaning 'stew' in English, where victims are stuffed into an oil barrel, doused with gasoline, and set on fire to burn alive.
He developed the method to challenge other cartel hitmen who competed to come up with ever-more terrifying and creative ways of killing.
They included Teodoro Garcia Simental famed for having the corpses of tortured rivals dissolved in baths of acid. Another method of fear-mongering, favoured by Morales as well as other cartels, was decapitating rivals and hanging their bodies from bridges or monuments, often with warning signs hung around their necks or stabbed into their chests with ice picks.
Along the way, the Zetas authored some of the worst atrocities of Mexico's drug war, leaving hundreds of bodies beheaded on roadsides or hanging from bridges, earning a reputation as perhaps the most terrifying of the country's numerous ruthless cartels.They would often leave signs on the executed bodies of their enemies, secured by ice picks through the chest, to warn rivals of their fate should they try to cross the Los Zetas.On Trevino Morales' watch, 72 Central and South American migrants were slaughtered by the Zetas in the northern town of San Fernando in 2010, authorities said. By the following year, federal officials announced finding 193 bodies buried in San Fernando, most belonging to migrants kidnapped off buses and killed by the Zetas for various reasons, including their refusal to work as drug mules.Trevino Morales is charged with ordering the kidnapping and killing of the 265 migrants, Sanchez said.
President Enrique Pena Nieto came into office promising to drive down levels of homicide, extortion and kidnapping but has struggled to make a credible dent in crime figures.His pledge to focus on citizen safety over other crimes has sparked worries among U.S. authorities that he would ease back on predecessor Felipe Calderon's U.S.-backed strategy aimed above all at decapitating drug cartels.The arrest of Trevino, a man widely blamed for both massive northbound drug trafficking and the deaths of untold scores of Mexicans and Central American migrants, will almost certainly earn praise from Pena Nieto's U.S. and Mexican critics alike.Trevino Morales' capture adds to the long list of Zetas' leaders who have been arrested or killed in recent years, including Zeta head Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano, whose fatal shooting by authorities last year left Trevino Morales in charge.
'There continues to be the perception that capturing this type of individual has a strategic value and the logic persists that it's preferable to fragment criminal groups and reduce them in size. On this point there isn't much change,' said Alejandro Hope, a former member of Mexico's domestic intelligence service.The debilitation of the Zetas has been widely seen as strengthening the country's most-wanted man, Sinaloa cartel head Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman, who has overseen a vicious turf war with the Zetas from hideouts believed to lie in rugged western Mexico. 'El Chapo is greatly strengthened because he will now have access to the crown jewel of narco-trafficking, Nuevo Laredo,' said George Grayson, an expert on the Zetas and professor of government at the College of William & Mary.
Slaughter: The bodies of decapitated men with their hands tied behind their back are scattered through a field in Caserio La Bomba, Guatemala in 2007, after the massacre of 27 farmers by the Zetas
Shocking: Innocent women and children and babies have been killed in Mexico's brutal drug wars
Shoot-out: Gang members lie dead in the grounds of the Los Arcos Hotel, Mexico, where at least six gunmen were shot dead after a gun fight between Mexican military and armed men from the Los Zetas
Trevino Morales is expected to be succeeded by his brother, Omar, a former low-ranking turf boss seen as far weaker than his older brother.Miguel Angel Trevino Morales began his career as a teenage gofer for the Los Tejas gang, which controlled most crime in his hometown across the border from Laredo, Texas. He soon graduated from washing cars and running errands to running drugs across the border, and was recruited into the Matamoros-based Gulf cartel.Trevino Morales' brother, sister and mother lived in Dallas but he had many relatives around Nuevo Laredo and, while moving frequently to avoid authorities, he was believed to often return to his hometown, the U.S. official said.Trevino Morales joined the Zetas, a group of Mexican special forces deserters who defected to work as hit men and bodyguards for the Gulf cartel in the late 1990s.
Indiscriminate: Los Zetas were behind the 2008 Morelia grenade attacks that saw eight were killed and over 100 injured
Gruesome drug war: In September 2011 two trucks were abandoned after one of them spilled 35 bodies of men and women belonging to the Los Zetas gang killed by a rival cartel. Morales and his henchmen set out to exact bitter revenge for the slaughter
Cache: Weapons belonging to the Zetas cartel are displayed after they were seized in 2011. The cartel has earned a brutal reputation in Mexico and across Central America and is controlled by former special forces soldiers
Huge haul: Armed police guard 1.5 tons of cocaine that was seized as it was shipped from Columbia into Los Zetas's vast smuggling network that spans much of South America and the US
Stories about the brutality of 'El Cuarenta,' or '40' as Trevino Morales became known, quickly become well-known among his men, his rivals and Nuevo Laredo citizens terrified of incurring his anger.
GORY VIOLENCE AND WHOLESALE TERROR: HOW THE ZETAS BECAME MEXICO'S MOST FEARED CARTEL
Through a campaign of merciless violence and wholesale terror, The Zetas have grown to become the most feared of all the drug gangs in Mexico. Founded by former soldiers of an elite army unit in 1999, they have carved out their own smuggling empire, expanded massively across Mexico and diversified into kidnapping, extortion and theft of crude oil.
They are also responsible for some of Mexico's bloodiest massacres, biggest jail breaks and fiercest attacks on authorities and earned their notoriety for brutality by becoming the first to publicly display their beheaded rivals, most infamously two police officers in April 2006 in the resort city of Acapulco. The severed heads were found on spikes outside a government building with a message signed 'Z' that said: 'So that you learn to respect.' Other atrocities believe to have been carried out by the Zetas - many of which committed under the orders ofTrevino Morales himself - include:
The 2008 Morelia grenade attacks that saw eight were killed and over 100 injured
The 2010 San Fernando massacre where 72 migrants were found dead
The 2010 slaughter of 13 people when gunmen stormed a teenager's birthday party in the city of Ciudad Juárez
The 2011 San Fernando massacre, where 193 people were slaughtered
The massacre of 27 farmers in Guatemala in 2007
The 2011 Monterrey casino attack that saw 52 people murdered (pictured)
A prison brawl that saw 31 Gulf cartel inmates killed atThe Altamira jail
The 2012 Apodaca prison riot, where a further 44 Gulf cartel inmates were killed and 37 Zetas escaped from prison
The Durango massacres that led to the death of 249 people in 2011
One technique favored by Trevino Morales was the 'guiso,' or stew, in which enemies would be stuffed in 55-gallon drums and burned alive.Others who crossed the commander would be beaten with wooden planks, the official said.Around 2005, Trevino Morales was promoted to boss of the Nuevo Laredo territory, or 'plaza' and given responsibility for fighting off the Sinaloa cartel's attempt to seize control of its drug-smuggling routes, according to U.S. and Mexican officials.
He orchestrated a series of killings on the U.S. side of the border, several by a group of young U.S. citizens who gunned down their victims on the streets of the American city.In 2006, the Gulf Cartel and the Zetas defeated the Sinaloa cartel in Nuevo Laredo, a victory that emboldened them as they began spreading south to towns and cities that had never before seen extensive organized crime.They set up criminal networks to control transit routes for drugs, migrants, extortion, kidnapping, contraband of pirated DVDs and CDs and countless other criminal activities, intimidating local residents and committing gruesome murders as an example to the uncooperative.
According to the U.S. official, Trevino Morales was in charge of Nuevo Leon, Piedras Negras and other areas until March 2007, when he was sent to the city of Veracruz following the death of a leading Zeta in a gun battle there.That same year, Trevino Morales and Lazcano began pushing for independence from the Gulf cartel after cartel head Osielo Cardenas Guillen's extradition to the U.S.The Zetas split from the Gulf cartel and by 2008 had operations in 28 major Mexican cities, according to an analysis by Grupo Savant, a Washington-based security think tank.In February 2008, Lazcano sent Trevino Morales to Guatemala, where he was responsible for eliminating local competitors and establish Zetas control of smuggling routes.
Trevino Morales was then named by Lazcano as national commander of the Zetas across Mexico despite his lack of military background, earning him the resentment of some of the original ex-military members of the Zetas, the official said.The promotion involved Trevino Morales in virtually every decision by the Zetas, the official said.Trevino rose to the top of the Zetas last year after leader Lazcano died in a shootout with Mexican marines in Coahuila state.Trevino Morales was indicted on drug trafficking and weapons charges in New York in 2009 and Washington in 2010, and the U.S. government issued a $5 million reward for information leading to his arrest.According to the indictments, Trevino Morales coordinated the shipment of hundreds of pounds of cocaine and marijuana each week from Mexico into the U.S., much of which had passed through Guatemala. He also moved bulk shipments of dollar bills back into Mexico, the documents say.
