MEXICO CITY — A leader of one of Mexico’s most brutal drug cartels was arrested early Wednesday, Mexican media reported.
Omar Trevino Morales, head of the Zetas paramilitary cartel, was captured by federal authorities in a wealthy suburb of Monterrey, capital of the northern state of Nuevo Leon. Both Mexico and the United States had offered multimillion-dollar rewards for Trevino’s arrest.
The Zetas are considered the most savage of Mexico’s many criminal organizations, specializing in beheadings of victims, mass slayings of immigrants, and deadly kidnappings and extortion. They control large chunks of territory, especially in northeastern Mexico, and have been involved in bloody power struggles with their former masters, the Gulf Cartel.
Key leaders of the Zetas have been taken down in recent years, though that has not stopped the group’s activities. Trevino, alias Z-42, took over about a year and a half ago, after the capture of his brother and then-commander, Miguel Z-40. A year before that, Mexican troops killed the top Zetas commander, Heriberto Lazcano.
