Mexico captured a high-ranking Tijuana drug cartel hitman on Saturday, the public security ministry said, the second big arrest to hit the organization in five days.
Saul Montes de Oca, known as "El Ciego," or the blind man, and close to cartel bosses, was arrested as he was about to take part in a car race in the tourist resort of San Felipe, the Baja California state attorney general's office said.
Montes de Oca is suspected of being a top killer at the powerful Arellano Felix Organization cartel, which is known for its gruesome torture and execution methods.
He also faces extradition to the US, where he is wanted on organized crime charges, the ministry said.
Police had been tracking him for five months and got a breakthrough this week when they dismantled a kidnapping ring whose leaders said they reported to him.
Montes de Oca worked for Rivera Martinez, handling drug cargo movements and abductions, the security ministry said.
The arrests were the latest in a series of victories for Mexican President Felipe Calderon's 15-month-old army crackdown on drug traffickers and the latest blow to the Tijuana gang, which has seen a string of its leaders jailed or killed in recent years.
Montes de Oca was involved in a 1997 assassination attempt on a renowned Tijuana journalist who exposed drug gang crimes.
Meanwhile, Mexican officials said on Saturday that 36 bodies were found buried in the backyard of a house in a city across the border from El Paso, Texas.
Mexican federal agents began digging behind a Ciudad Juarez house allegedly used by the Juarez drug cartel two weeks ago after receiving an anonymous tip, officials said.
In the raid, investigators found 1,700kg of marijuana in the house.
They found six dismembered bodies and as excavations continued, the tally rose.
On Saturday, the attorney general's office said in a statement that a total of 36 bodies had been found in 16 pits in the house's backyard.
The statement said investigators are done excavating behind the house in La Cuesta neighborhood and they believe there are no more remains to be found.
The remains date back about five years and all but three apparently are males. The statement said investigators were still trying to determine how the victims died and who buried the bodies.
Cartels frequently use "safe houses" in border cities to store drugs, house gunmen and dispose of dead rivals.
DEATH CONSTANTLY LOOMING: Decades of detention took a major toll on Iwao Hakamada’s mental health, his lawyers describing him as ‘living in a world of fantasy’ A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded US$1.44 million in compensation, an official said yesterday. The payout represents ￥12,500 (US$83) for each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last. It is a record for compensation of this kind, Japanese media said. The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others. The case sparked scrutiny of the justice system in
The head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, was sacked yesterday, days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he no longer trusts him, and fallout from a report on the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. “The Government unanimously approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to end ISA Director Ronen Bar’s term of office,” a statement said. He is to leave his post when his successor is appointed by April 10 at the latest, the statement said. Netanyahu on Sunday cited an “ongoing lack of trust” as the reason for moving to dismiss Bar, who joined the agency in 1993. Bar, meant to
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
‘HUMAN NEGLIGENCE’: The fire is believed to have been caused by someone who was visiting an ancestral grave and accidentally started the blaze, the acting president said Deadly wildfires in South Korea worsened overnight, officials said yesterday, as dry, windy weather hampered efforts to contain one of the nation’s worst-ever fire outbreaks. More than a dozen different blazes broke out over the weekend, with Acting South Korean Interior and Safety Minister Ko Ki-dong reporting thousands of hectares burned and four people killed. “The wildfires have so far affected about 14,694 hectares, with damage continuing to grow,” Ko said. The extent of damage would make the fires collectively the third-largest in South Korea’s history. The largest was an April 2000 blaze that scorched 23,913 hectares across the east coast. More than 3,000
RSS