Twelve-year-old Mexican executioner El Ponchis is captured by police



Mexican police believe they have arrested a 12-year-old child hitman known as 'El Ponchis'.

Officials said the minor could be the paid executioner famed for slitting victims' throats who is known to be working for a drug cartel.

Pedro Luis Benitez, the attorney general of Morelos state in central Mexico, told a local radio station that police had detained a minor on Friday.

Watch a video interview with El Ponchis below



Sadistic: The hitman who favours cutting his victim's throats is believed to have been caught by Mexican police

He did not say if the boy in custody was El Ponchis (The Cloak) but that officers were looking for another child.

El Ponchis is believed to work for the South Pacific Cartel (SPC), headed by Julio Jesus Radilla, which in battling for control of the cocaine trade.

His preferred technique leaves the victim's head hanging by a thread.

He is said to work with a group of girls, including his sisters, who often help with the disposal of bodies.

Killer: The 12-year-old said that he is paid $3,000 (£1,870) to assassinate people



Videos have surfaced on the internet showing El Ponchis slashing the throat of one enemy and photos are circulating of him posing with various weapons.

One video, briefly posted on YouTube, showed El Ponchis confessing to working for a branch of the Beltran Leyva cartel.

The youth tells an unseen questioner that his gang was paid $3,000 (£1,870) per killing.

Teen killers: Members of the South Pacific Cartel, most of who are aged 12 to 23

'When we don't find the rivals, we kill innocent people, maybe a construction worker or a taxi driver,' he said.

The killer has also posed for photographs wielding a rifle and standing beside a body.

While Mr Benitez did not give the age of the suspects, he implied they were still young enough to be playing with toy guns.

'It is easy for [the criminals] to give them a firearm, making it appear as it if were a plastic weapon and that it is a game, when in fact it is not,' he said.

Bloody war: More than 28,000 Mexicans have been killed since late 2006 in drug-related violence, and 2010 is on course to be the bloodiest so far

Suspects under 18 are prosecuted in a separate legal system for youthful offenders for most crime in Mexico. But there are growing calls for both that and the nation's overcrowded adult prison system to be revamped.

President Felipe Calderon, who launched the offensive against cartels in 2006, acknowledged several months ago that 'in the most violent areas of the country, there is an unending recruitment of young people without hope, without opportunities'.

More than 28,000 Mexicans have been killed since late 2006 in drug-related violence, and 2010 is on course to be the bloodiest so far.

