(13 Sep 2012) A man believed to be the leader of the Gulf drug cartel, which controls some of the most valuable and violently contested smuggling routes along the US border, was arrested by Mexican marines and presented to the media on Thursday morning.
Jorge Eduardo Costilla Sanchez alias "El Coss" was paraded before the media in Mexico City.
"The Navy Secretariat of Mexico reports the detention of the man who is alleged to be and says he is Jorge Eduardo Costilla Sanchez , known as "El Coss," or "Shadow" or "XX", the alleged leader of the Gulf Cartel." said Navy spokesman Admiral Jose Luis Vergara.
Costilla's capture is a major victory in the battle against drug trafficking, but it could open a power vacuum and intensify a struggle south of the Texas border in northeast Mexico, a region that has seen some of the most horrific violence in the country's six-year war between law and the cartels and between the gangs themselves.
Vergara said Costilla was detained on Wednesday evening in the Gulf port of Tampico.
One of Mexico's most-wanted men, the 41-year-old is charged in the US with drug-trafficking and threatening US law enforcement officials.
US authorities offered five (m) million US dollars for information leading to his arrest.
Vergara said Sanchez headed up the Gulf Cartel, considered the second most powerful criminal organisation in the country.
Clad in a blue plaid shirt and bulletproof vest, the suspect was presented along with 10 bodyguards, five with bruised faces and clad in camouflage military fatigues similar to those of the marines who held them captive.
The navy also showed dozens of assault weapons, some pistols that appeared gilded and studded with jewels, and several expensive-looking watches seized in the operation.
Vergara said five guards had been arrested on Wednesday morning in Rio Bravo, Tamaulipas.
Five fled when marines tried to arrest them in Tampico and the chase led authorities to Coss's hideout, he said.
Costilla shook his head when asked if he had anything to say about the charges against him and when asked if he had a lawyer.
The Matamoros-based Gulf Cartel was once one of Mexico's strongest.
While it was badly weakened in recent years by battles with other gangsters and by law enforcement operations, it smuggled and distributed tons of cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and marijuana into the United States under the leadership of the Cardenas Guillen family, three brothers who took over from one another as their siblings were captured or killed.
After Cardenas Guillen was arrested in 2003 and imprisoned in the US, officials say Costilla joined the leader's brother Ezequiel in running the cartel.
The tumult at the top prompted the powerful Sinaloa cartel to move in from its base along the Pacific Coast and launch a war for control of Nuevo Laredo, the busiest cargo crossing between the United States and Mexico
The Gulf Cartel won the fight, backed by a gang of assassins recruited from the Mexican military special forces.
Emboldened by their success in holding Nuevo Laredo, the enforcers known as the Zetas began asserting their independence and split from the Gulf Cartel in 2010 after the slaying of a Zeta member in the city of Reynosa, across from McAllen, Texas, that Costilla is believed to have ordered.
The resulting fighting between the former allies transformed northeastern Mexico, an area of cattle ranches, sorghum fields and the industrial city of Monterrey into a sort of war zone rocked by daily shootouts and gruesome violence that included decapitations and corpses hung from bridges.
Find out more about AP Archive: [ Ссылка ]
Twitter: [ Ссылка ]
Facebook: [ Ссылка ]
Instagram: [ Ссылка ]
You can license this story through AP Archive: [ Ссылка ]
