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Mexico has captured the most-wanted drug lord in the country, Servando “La Tuta” Gomez, head of the Knights Templar cartel, police said on Friday, delivering a boost to a government battered by gang violence.
The 49-year-old former teacher was the prime target of President Enrique Pena Nieto’s effort to regain control of Michoacan, a western state wracked by clashes between Gomez’s Knights Templar cartel and heavily armed vigilantes trying to oust them.
The early morning arrest comes as Pena Nieto seeks to quell public outrage in Mexico after the late September abduction and apparent massacre of 43 trainee teachers by corrupt police in league with gang members.
That incident triggered Pena Nieto’s deepest crisis. Attorney General Jesus Murillo, under fire for months over his handling of that investigation, will step down, a senior government official said on Friday.
An announcement about the change would probably come later on Friday, a separate official from Murillo’s office said.
After months of intelligence work, federal police captured Gomez and some people with him at a house in the Michoacan state capital of Morelia, police said. No shots were fired.
“He will be brought to Mexico City in the coming hours to make a declaration,” a police spokesman said.
Last week, police seized many properties in the area and arrested a handful of people connected to Gomez. Local media reported that those busts had led to his arrest.
A father of at least seven, Gomez is wanted by the United States for trafficking methamphetamine and cocaine. The Justice Department said he was also involved in the 2009 murder of 12 Mexican federal police officers.
Mexican authorities had placed a bounty of 30m pesos ($2 million) on his head.
Since the Mexican government began a military crackdown in 2007 on drug cartels, more than 100,000 people have been killed in gang-related violence.
(AFP)
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