Omar Treviño Morales, leader of the feared drug cartel, arrested just days after capture of Servando Gomez, leader of the Knights Templar drug gang

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

Mexican police and soldiers have arrested Omar Treviño Morales, the leader of the feared Zetas drug cartel, giving President Enrique Peña Nieto his second capture of a kingpin in less than a week.

Treviño, brother of captured ex-Zetas leader Miguel Angel Trevino, was caught by members of the army and the federal police in the northern city of Monterrey in the early hours of Wednesday, a senior government official said.



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His arrest comes just days after the capture of Servando Gomez, leader of the Knights Templar drug gang.

The Mexican government had offered a 30m peso ($2m) reward for his capture on weapons and organized crime charges.

The US Drug Enforcement Administration had offered a $5m reward for his capture, saying he was wanted on drug-trafficking charges, but listed “Omar” as an alias and his given name as Alejandro.

The suspect is the brother of Miguel Angel Treviño Morales, described as the most bloodthirsty leader of Mexico’s most violent cartel.

Miguel Angel was arrested in July 2013, almost a year after marines killed the Zetas’ other biggest leader, Heriberto Lazcano “El Lazca”.

The Zetas carved a path of brutality, bloodshed and mutilated bodies across northern Mexico during their turf battles with the rival Gulf cartel.

Among the grimmest incidents pinned on the Zetas are the massacres of dozens of migrant workers, an arson attack on a Monterrey casino in 2011 that killed 52 and the dumping of 49 decapitated bodies near the same city in 2012.

Founded by army deserters in the late 1990s, the Zetas initially acted as enforcers for the Gulf Cartel, based along the border with Texas and one of the oldest organized crime groups in Mexico. But the group struck out on its own in early 2010, setting off the most violent phase in Mexico’s drug war.