|
| FILE - This undated file image downloaded from the Mexican Attorney General's Office rewards program website, shows the leader of Zetas drug cartel, Miguel Angel Trevino Morales, alias “Z-40”. Mexican media reports and a U.S. federal official confirmed that Trevino Morales has been captured. |
MEXICO CITY
(AP) -- Miguel Angel Trevino Morales, the notoriously brutal leader of
the feared Zetas drug cartel, has been captured in the first major blow
against an organized crime leader by a Mexican administration struggling
to drive down persistently high levels of violence, a U.S. federal
official said Monday.
Several Mexican media
outlets reported that Trevino Morales was captured by Mexican Marines
near the border city of Nuevo Laredo, which has long served as the
Zetas' base of operations. The U.S. federal official was not authorized
to speak to the press and asked not to be identified.
Trevino
Morales, known as "Z-40," is uniformly described as one of the two most
powerful cartel heads in Mexico, the leader of a corps of special
forces defectors who splintered off into their own cartel in 2010 and
metastasized across Mexico, expanding from drug dealing into extortion,
kidnapping and human trafficking.
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.
On his
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' capture
is a public-relations victory for President Enrique Pena Nieto, who came
into office promising to drive down levels of homicide, extortion and
kidnapping but has struggled to make a credible dent in crime figures.
It adds to the long list of Zetas' leaders who have been captured or
killed in recent years, including Zeta head Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano,
whose fatal shooting by authorities last year left Trevino Morales in
charge.
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.
Pena
Nieto's pledge to focus on citizen safety over other crimes 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.
"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.
Trevino
Morales, who is in his early 40s, 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, which absorbed Los Tejas when it took over
drug dealing in the valuable border territory.
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.
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.
"If you get called to
a meeting with him, you're not going to come out of that meeting," said
a U.S. law-enforcement official in Mexico City, who spoke on condition
of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic.
One
technique favored by Trevino Morales was the "guiso," or stew, in which
enemies would be placed in 55-gallon drums and burned alive, the
official said. Others who crossed the commander who be beaten with
wooden planks, he 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. American
officials believe the hit men also carried out an unknown number of
killings on the Mexican side of the border, the U.S. official said.
In
one attack in the U.S., the killers shot the intended victim's
stepbrother and fled the scene, according to testimony at one of the hit
men's trial. As the hit men fled, Trevino Morales called them from
Mexico and ordered them to return and shoot the man he had originally
wanted killed, who was accused of not paying the Gulf Cartel for drugs.
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 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 gunbattle
there.
That same year, Trevino Morales and
Lazcano began pushing for independence from the Gulf cartel after cartel
head Osiel 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. He orchestrated the military-style ambush
of Guatemalan drug boss Juan Jose "Juancho" Leon in March 2008 and may
even have fired the bullet that killed him, the U.S. official said.
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 the northern state of Coahuila.
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.
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.
