Clean-Up of the Drug World Continues

Miguel Angel Trevino Morales, leader of Zeta cartel

sage:  Two more high-level international drug dealers were arrested/captured today.  Story 1 takes place in Mexico where the leader of the infamous Zeta cartel was captured. Meanwhile iIn Spain, an international trafficker running cocaine out of Venezuela was arrested (Story 2).

Story 1 – Leader of Mexico’s Brutal Zetas Drug Cartel Captured

Associated Press – July 15, 2013

http://tinyurl.com/oqnpt2f

Trevino Morales, known as “Z-40,” was captured by Mexican Marines in Nuevo Laredo, the Mexican media reported. The arrest was confirmed by a US official.

His capture removes the leader of a corps of special forces defectors who splintered off into their own cartel and spread across Mexico, expanding from drug dealing into extortion and human trafficking.

Along the way, the Zetas authored some of the worst atrocities of Mexico’s drug war, slaughtering dozens, leaving their bodies on display and gaining a reputation as perhaps the most terrifying of the country’s numerous ruthless cartels.

The capture of Trevino Morales is a public-relations victory for President Enrique Pena Nieto, who came into office promising to drive down levels of homicide, extortion and kidnapping but has struggled to make a credible dent in crime figures.

At the same time, Mr Pena Nieto’s pledge to focus on citizen safety over other crimes sparked worries among US authorities that he would ease back on a bi-national strategy aimed at decapitating drug cartels.

The arrest of Trevino, a man widely blamed for both massive northbound drug trafficking and the deaths of untold scores of Mexicans and Central American migrants, will almost certainly earn praise from US and Mexican critics alike.

Trevino Morales’ rise from the streets of Nuevo Laredo to the top of Mexico’s drug trafficking world was fueled by a brutality that stunned a population inured to violence.

He began his career as a teenage gofer for the Los Tejas gang, which controlled most crime in his hometown across the border from Laredo, Texas.

He soon graduated from washing cars and running errands to running drugs across the border, and was recruited into the Matamoros-based Gulf cartel, which absorbed Los Tejas when it took over drug dealing in the valuable border territory.

Trevino Morales joined the Zetas, a group of Mexican special forces deserters who defected to work as hit men and bodyguards for the Gulf cartel in the late 1990s.

Stories about the brutality of “El Cuarenta,” or “40″ as Trevino Morales became known, quickly become well-known among his men, his rivals and Nuevo Laredo citizens terrified of incurring his anger.

“If you get called to a meeting with him, you’re not going to come out of that meeting,” said a US law-enforcement official in Mexico City, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic.

One technique favored by Trevino Morales was the “guiso,” or stew, in which enemies would be placed in 55-gallon drums and burned alive. Others who crossed the commander who be beaten with wooden planks.

Trevino Morales was indicted on drug trafficking and weapons charges in New York in 2009 and Washington in 2010, and the US government issued a $5 million reward for information leading to his arrest.

According to the indictments, Trevino Morales coordinated the shipment of hundreds of pounds of cocaine and marijuana each week from Mexico into the US, much of which had passed through Guatemala.

Story 2 – Wanted British Drug Baron Arrested in Spain

The Telegraph – July 15, 2013

http://tinyurl.com/q4mvzcv

Brian Charrington was one of 13 people arrested in Spain and Venezuela as part of the operation. Police also seized 485 pounds of cocaine hidden in an apartment in L’Albir, near the eastern resort city of Benidorm, and impounded property and bank accounts worth more than five million euros.

A police statement described Charrington as “one of the 10 criminals most investigated by European police and leader of an international drug-trafficking organisation”.

Charrington operated in the North East of England during the 80s and rose to notoriety in 1992 when a Customs raid at his Nunthorpe home in Middlesbrough unearthed almost £2m in cash, allegedly linked to drug dealing.

He was also accused of being a key player in a plot to smuggle Colombian cocaine with a street value of £150m, but was released when his role as a police informant was revealed. He was re-homed in Australia, but later moved to Spain.

His arrest comes just over a week after Mark Lilley, a convicted British drug trafficker who had been on the run for 13 years, was caught by Spanish police hiding in a panic room.

In May, police apprehended another Briton on the run, Andrew Moran, who had escaped four years earlier from Burnley crown court, where he was convicted in his absence of conspiring to commit armed robbery.

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