Mexican marines captured Sergio Villarreal Barragan, a presumed leader of the embattled Beltran Leyva cartel and one of the country’s most-wanted fugitives, in a raid on Sunday in the central state of Puebla, the government said.
The alleged capo known as “El Grande” did not put up any resistance when he was arrested along with two accomplices as they left a residence in Puebla City, government security spokesman Alejandro Poire said.
The raid involved 30 Navy marines, five vehicles and a helicopter.
PHOTO: AFP
“This is a new and resounding blow by the federal government against crime, given the high rank and dangerousness of this person inside one of the country’s most extensive criminal organizations, which has now been deeply weakened,” Poire said in a statement.
Villarreal’s capture is the fourth major blow delivered to drug cartels by the government of Mexican President Felipe Calderon in the past year.
First came the death of Arturo Beltran Leyva, the top leader of Beltran Leyva cartel, in a raid outside Mexico City on Dec. 16 last year. Then soldiers killed the Sinaloa cartel’s No. 3 capo, Ignacio “Nacho” Coronel, on July 29. On Aug. 30, federal police announced the capture of Edgar Valdez Villarreal, alias “La Barbie.” The two men are not related.
Villarreal, appears on an Attorney General’s Office list of Mexico’s most-wanted drug traffickers, with a reward of just over US$2 million offered for his capture. He faces at least seven investigations for alleged drug trafficking and organized crime, Poire said.
He is listed as one of the top remaining leaders of the Beltran Leyva cartel following the death of Arturo, who was known as the “Boss of Bosses,” and the arrest of “La Barbie,” a former Beltran Leyva hitman and operative.
Poire said the Beltran Leyvas “had constituted one of the groups with the largest presence in the country,” conducting operations in 32 Mexican states, including the capital, but trouble began when Alfredo Beltran Leyva was arrested in 2008. Then the death of his brother Arturo the following year splintered the cartel, launching a brutal war for control of the gang, involving mass executions and beheadings in once-peaceful parts of central Mexico. Carlos Beltran Leyva was arrested a few days after Arturo’s death.
The fight for the remains of the cartel pitted Hector Beltran Leyva and Villarreal against a faction led by “La Barbie.” Hector is the last Beltran Leyva brother at large.
The Beltran Leyva brothers once formed a part of the Sinaloa cartel, but broke away following a dispute. An indication of the problems they face is that three of the four main blows dealt to drug gangs in the past year involve Beltran Leyva leaders or operatives.
In the central state of Morelos, police discovered nine bodies in clandestine graves on Saturday in the same area where four more were recently found. The Public Safety Department said in a statement that all 13 victims were believed to have been killed on the orders of “La Barbie” in his battle for control of the cartel.
On Sunday, the military announced that it filed charges against four troops for the Sept. 5 shooting deaths of a man and his 15-year-old son along the highway linking the northern city of Monterrey to Laredo, Texas. Authorities have said soldiers opened fire on the family vehicle when it failed to stop at a checkpoint, though relatives who were also in the car say they were shot at after they passed a military convoy. The mother and wife of the two victims was also wounded in the shooting.
A captain, a corporal and two infantrymen are in custody in military prison and have been charged with homicide, the Mexican Defense Department said in a statement.
X-37B COMPARISON: China’s spaceplane is most likely testing technology, much like US’ vehicle, said Victoria Samson, an official at the Secure World Foundation China’s shadowy, uncrewed reusable spacecraft, which launches atop a rocket booster and lands at a secretive military airfield, is most likely testing technology, but could also be used for manipulating or retrieving satellites, experts said. The spacecraft, on its third mission, was last month observed releasing an object, moving several kilometers away and then maneuvering back to within a few hundred meters of it. “It’s obvious that it has a military application, including, for example, closely inspecting objects of the enemy or disabling them, but it also has non-military applications,” said Marco Langbroek, a lecturer in optical space situational awareness at Delft
Through a basement door in southeastern Turkey lies a sprawling underground city — perhaps the country’s largest — which one historian believes dates back to the ninth century BC. Archeologists stumbled upon the city-under-a-city “almost by chance” after an excavation of house cellars in Midyat, near the Syrian border, led to the discovery of a vast labyrinth of caves in 2020. Workers have already cleared more than 50 subterranean rooms, all connected by 120m of tunnel carved out of the rock. However, that is only a fraction of the site’s estimated 900,000m2 area, which would make it the largest underground city in Turkey’s
Soaring high across a gorge in the rugged Himalayas, a newly finished bridge would soon help India entrench control of disputed Kashmir and meet a rising strategic threat from China. The Chenab Rail Bridge, the highest of its kind in the world, has been hailed as a feat of engineering linking the restive Kashmir valley to the vast Indian plains by train for the first time. However, its completion has sparked concern among some in a territory with a long history of opposing Indian rule, already home to a permanent garrison of more than 500,000 soldiers. India’s military brass say the strategic benefits
‘RADICAL LEFT LUNATIC’: Trump earlier criticized Kamala Harris, his new opponent, calling her ‘the ultra-liberal driving force behind every single Biden catastrophe’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called on voters to defend the country’s democracy as he explained his decision to drop his bid for re-election and throw his support behind US Vice President Kamala Harris. As “the defense of democracy is more important than any title,” Biden said that he was stepping aside to deliver an implicit repudiation of former US president Donald Trump in his first public address since his announcement on Sunday that he would not be the Democratic candidate. He did not name Trump, whom he has called an existential threat to democracy. “Nothing, nothing can come in the