The Zetas, a Mexican drug cartel known for beheading its victims, got decapitated itself today when a joint operation by police and soldiers netted ringleader Omar Treviño Morales.
The capture of Treviño, also known as Z42, was Mexico's second major drug-war victory in the past week. Last Friday, Knights Templar boss Servando Gomez Martinez aka “La Tuta” was nabbed in the southern state of Michoacan.
Today's police operation occurred around 4 a.m., when an elite squad of law enforcement agents broke into one of Treviño’s safe houses in San Pedro Garza Garcia, in the northern state of Nuevo León. The collared narco is being transported to Mexico City to be paraded in front of the press as another drug war trophy, as is the tradition in Mexico.
Treviño took over the Zetas in July 2013, after his older brother Miguel Angel, aka “Z40,” was captured by police. The older brother is believed to be responsible for ordering two gruesome massacres that resulted in the deaths of some 265 Central American migrants whose bodies were found in mass graves in San Fernando, Tamaulipas.
The Zetas, a group originally formed to be the muscle for the Gulf Cartel, eventually created their own criminal empire that included drugs, human-trafficking and smuggling oil. Under the brutal leadership of the Treviño brothers, the Zetas were known to behead and the dismember their victims.
Mexico had offered $2 million for information leading to the capture of Treviño, and the U.S., who identified him as a major “supply source for multi-kilogram loads of cocaine smuggled from Mexico to the United States," offered an additional $5 million reward.