Cartel chief caught, Mexico says

MEXICO CITY — Mexican marines acting on U.S. intelligence seized the leader of a breakaway faction of the violent Zetas cartel, officials said Thursday, proclaiming the third such arrest in a month as a victory for a binational strategy focused on removing the leadership of Mexico’s powerful organized crime groups.

Ivan Velazquez Caballero, known as “El Taliban,” was seized by a team of marines in the northern city of San Luis Potosi, the Mexican navy said.

He becomes the 24th of Mexico’s 37 most-wanted purported cartel leaders to be killed or captured under President Felipe Calderon, who escalated Mexico’s war on drug gangs days after taking office and who ends his term in two months.

Calderon has been praised by the U.S. for his assault on the cartels, but heatedly criticized inside Mexico for an excessive focus on using armed force and arresting gang leaders.

Critics say his approach splintered cartels into dozens of smaller factions, increasing the competition among them and fueling a brutal war for control of smuggling routes before Mexico had an adequate law-enforcement and justice system in place.

“You lose the leadership and the group starts fighting for power. We’ve seen that with every group that’s been beheaded,” said Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, an expert on the Zetas’ home state of Tamaulipas and chairman of the government department at the University of Texas at Brownsville.

The government said at least 47,500 people had been killed in drug-related violence during Calderon’s term before it stopped releasing figures last year. Independent observers say the death toll could be many thousands higher.

Velazquez Caballero purportedly has been fighting a bloody internal battle with top Zetas’ leader Miguel Angel Trevino Morales, and officials have said the split was behind a recent surge in massacres and shootouts, particularly in northern Mexico.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration declined to comment on the potential for more violence in the wake of the arrest.

Velazquez Caballero is the third purported cartel leader to be taken into custody this month. All are accused of leading factions of the Gulf Cartel or Zetas, former allies now feuding over valuable smuggling territory along the U.S. border. The purported heads of the two main factions of the Gulf group, Mario Cardenas Guillen and Jorge Eduardo Costilla Sanchez, were also seized in navy operations in northern Mexico.

“This is another big fish, it’s another great catch by the Mexicans,” DEA spokesman Rusty Payne said.

He said the arrest emerged from close intelligence sharing between the two countries.

“We’re there, we assist and sometimes we try to pass along information that’s beneficial. We helped them,” he said. “We help them connect the dots. If somebody’s got sources on this side of the border, we may know of somebody here who has information about what’s going on south of the border, and we would pass that information along.”

The Zetas are one of Mexico’s two most powerful cartels and are considered the hemisphere’s most violent criminal organization.

They have been blamed for a large share of Mexico’s drug war deaths, though other gangs also have repeatedly committed mass slayings.

Joaquin Guzman, the head of the other dominant cartel, Sinaloa, remains free, and there have been far fewer arrests of his associates.

Navy spokesman Jose Luis Vergara said marines acting on unspecified intelligence were patrolling in the city of San Luis Potosi when they spotted a group of men leaving a house.

When the men spotted the marines, they moved suspiciously back into the house, Vergara said, and marines followed, arresting Velazquez Caballero and two other men inside.

Also known as “Z-50,” Velazquez Caballero has a $2.3 million reward on his head. Masked marines displayed the burly, handcuffed suspect alongside two purported accomplices and a table of guns and other contraband seized during his arrest.

On Sept. 14, eight men were found shot to death and one hanging from a bridge in Nuevo Laredo, territory officials say was traditionally controlled by Trevino Morales, alias “Z-40.”

Aanalysts say 14 bulletridden bodies stuffed in a van in mid-August in San Luis Potosi were men loyal to “El Taliban,” and may have been left there as a warning by Trevino Morales’ underlings.

“If ‘El Taliban’ had groups of gunmen under his command, violence could be unleashed, because they’ve only captured a leader and not his subordinates,” said Raul Benitez, a security expert at Mexico’s National Autonomous University.

“But when someone’s been switching sides, no one knows how many forces he’s got.”

Information for this article was contributed by Mark Stevenson of The Associated Press.