Arrest of alleged leader sheds light on brutal Zetas gang Arrest gives officials another look into underworld

Details emerge on life of alleged leader in vicious Zetas gang

Jesus Rejón, seen here in Mexico City just after his recent arrest, is alleged by some to have a very high spot when it comes to the hierarchy of the Zetas. Jesus Rejón, seen here in Mexico City just after his recent arrest, is alleged by some to have a very high spot when it comes to the hierarchy of the Zetas. Photo: Alexandre Meneghini, Associated Press Photo: Alexandre Meneghini, Associated Press Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Arrest of alleged leader sheds light on brutal Zetas gang 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

"Because of this, it has been 17 years since I've seen her," Rejón, 35, alleged to be the third-ranking boss of the vicious Zetas gang, told his Mexican police captors during videotaped interrogations last week.

"You feel it very hard, cruel," he said, visibly befuddled by a question about remorse. "But that's the way it is."

U.S. and Mexican investigators quibble about Rejón's exact rank in the Zetas. But they agree the slightly built, soft-eyed man stands among the worst of a very bad bunch.

Rejón's capture perhaps marks the gang's biggest loss in years. Dubbed "Z-7," he was the seventh gangster recruited to the Zetas' original 14 members, the brainchild of now U.S.-imprisoned drug lord Osiel Cardenas.

Rejón's arrest leaves Heriberto Lazcano, another special forces soldier said to be the top leader, the last of the original Zetas left in the game.

"I would put him in the top five," one U.S. law enforcement official in Mexico said of Rejón's place in the hierarchy. "If there's real loyalty in him, it's probably to Lazcano. He's very trusted by Lazcano."

Under surveillance

After enlisting in the army before his 17th birthday, Rejón was trained as a special forces commando. He deserted in 1999 to sign on as the bodyguard and go-to assassin for Cardenas, then Mexico's most powerful gangster and leader of the Gulf Cartel.

Rejón's fall was a long time coming. He had been on law enforcement's radar since at least 2004, with the Mexican government offering a $2.3 million reward for his capture and U.S. officials putting up another $5 million.

Surveillance reports from 2006, reportedly provided to the Mexican government by U.S. agents, described Rejón as the criminal lord of a narrow stretch of the border, across the Rio Grande and a bit upstream from McAllen. Informants provided precise descriptions of his homes in the towns of Diaz Ordaz and Nueva Ciudad Guerrero and then exact times when the gangster was in one or the other of them.

Rejón seemed in those days to be living almost as a harried traveling businessman, leaving home for short trips to assassinate Zetas' enemies, then returning for time with his wife and children.

Despite the surveillance, for whatever reason, he was never arrested.

Zetas' atrocities, from August's massacre of 72 foreign migrants to the murders of a U.S. federal agent and several hundred apparently innocent Mexicans dumped in mass graves, have dominated Mexico's drug war news.

President Felipe Calderon's government has made destroying the gang a top priority, even as the Zetas fight a multifront war with Mexico's other gangster bands.

"It's all about the Zetas now," said the U.S. law enforcement official in Mexico, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "And it's just because of the outrageous behavior of those guys."

After Cardenas' January 2007 extradition to face trial in Houston, Rejón stuck with Lazcano and other Zetas, growing increasingly apart from former Gulf Cartel allies.

"When they started killing people, we were prepared," Rejón said of the battles between the two gangs last year. "That's where the structure broke down."

A sense of ethics

By 2008, Rejón was in control of the state of Coahuila, bordering West Texas and moving loads of narcotics across the Rio Grande, according to a U.S. federal indictment.

Rejón was the Zetas' area boss when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jaime Zapata was killed in February in San Luis Potosi sate. It's unclear if he had any prior knowledge of the attack on Zapata and another agent by low-level Zetas gunmen.

There's also apparently no link between Rejón and the various massacres since last summer in the town San Fernando, some 80 miles below the Rio Grande at Brownsville, the U.S. official said.

But by the time of his capture, Rejón commanded perhaps several hundred men, most recently in the western state of Zacatecas, a Zetas fiefdom, the U.S. official said. At least 15 suspected Zetas gunmen were killed in pitched battles in Zacatecas on July 1, just hours before Rejón's arrest outside Mexico City.

Despite his reputation for brutality, Rejón displays in his videotaped interrogation a military-infused, if twisted, sense of ethics that investigators say characterized the former soldiers who composed the original Zetas.

Asked about attempts by the leader of La Familia, a rival gang based in Michoacan state, to form an alliance with the Zetas last month, Rejón said he was personally against it.

"They didn't keep their word. You could never make a deal with them," Rejón said of the Michoacan mobsters. "Who betrays you once will betray you twice."

While the government's removal of Rejón and other original Zetas may lead to the gang's eventual collapse, it also opens the way for an even harsher sort of gangster to replace them.

"They were very tight, very disciplined, very organized," said a former U.S. law enforcement official, now a spokesman for the security consultancy Grupo Savant, of Rejón and others. "They were former military guys. Now you've got a bunch of crooks operating under the Zeta umbrella."

dudley.althaus@chron.com

jason.buch@express-news.net