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Mexican Marines present head of the Gulf Cartel boss Jorge Eduardo Costilla to the media in Mexico City on Thursday.
MEXICO CITY -- The Mexican Navy said Wednesday it had captured one of Mexico's most wanted drug bosses, the head of the Gulf Cartel, in what would mark a major victory in President Felipe Calderon's crackdown on organized crime.
The Navy said it would give more details about the arrest of the man it believed to be Jorge Costilla, alias "El Coss," when it parades him in front of the media later Thursday.
A government security official said Costilla, 41, was detained in Tampico in northeastern Mexico, where the cartel is active, without putting up a fight. The U.S. State Department has a reward of up to $5 million for his capture.
No other details were immediately available.
The arrest of the suspected capo comes barely a week after the Mexican Navy captured senior Gulf Cartel member Mario Cardenas, alias "Fatso," also in the state of Tamaulipas where Costilla was caught.
The Gulf Cartel has been weakened by a violent turf war with the Zetas, a gang formed by army deserters which acted as enforcers for the cartel before breaking with their employers in 2010.
It could also have political implications because top officials in the cartel's stronghold of Tamaulipas have been accused of taking money from local drug gangs.
"All these politicians who were getting money from the Gulf Cartel ought to be very worried now because this information is going to come to light in Mexico or the United States," said Alberto Islas, a security expert at consultancy Risk Evaluation, after hearing the reports of Costilla's capture.
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Costilla features prominently on a wanted list of 37 kingpins the Mexican government published in 2009. Well over 20 on that list have now been captured or killed.
Still, the Mexican Navy has erred before in its claims, saying in June it had captured a son of Mexico's most wanted man Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, only to later admit that it had not done so.
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Damaging revelations
Islas said he expected Costilla to be extradited to the United States, and that his testimony could prove damaging to officials in Tamaulipas and neighboring Veracruz state, which has also been dogged by allegations of corruption.
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Tomas Yarrington, a governor of Tamaulipas between 1999 and 2005, is fugitive and wanted in Mexico for aiding drug gangs.
Yarrington governed Tamaulipas for the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which will retake the presidency in December after its candidate Enrique Pena Nieto won a July 1 election. The PRI suspended Yarrington from the party in May.
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Islas said damaging revelations about graft would raise pressure on Pena Nieto to take steps to clean up the image of the centrist PRI, which governed Mexico between 1929 and 2000. That rule was tainted by frequent allegations of corruption.
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The FBI said Costilla is believed to have taken over the daily operations of the cartel after his former boss Osiel Cardenas was arrested and jailed in Mexico in 2003.
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It said a federal arrest warrant was issued for Costilla in Texas in 2002, and that he was charged with drug offenses, threatening to assault and murder federal agents, and money laundering.
The FBI's wanted notice includes a grainy photograph of Costilla wearing a cowboy hat and a moustache.
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With Costilla's apparent capture, the cartel is looking increasingly weak, and bloody turf wars for control of the northeastern border with Texas would now intensify. "There will be an increase in violence there," Islas said.
Reuters
The stage was now set for increased hostilities in the region between Mexico's two most powerful gangs, Guzman's Sinaloa Cartel and the Zetas, he noted.
This could prove a headache for Pena Nieto, who has vowed to quickly reduce the number of beheadings and mass executions. There have been more than 55,000 drug-related deaths in Calderon's six-year offensive against cartels.
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As long as Americans want drugs these guy will find a means of supplying them.
As long as there are corrupt politician's in Mexico the cartels have no fear.
Mexico needs invading.We need a president that will tare that desert all to hell.It's time to kick their nasty drug ass.Our cities in the US are a cess pool for drug use,gambling,etc.Men keep trying to use School kids to prove states need gambling.They say the taxs can go to schools.Yeah right,Teachers educate the children and when they get of age the Gambling system will destroy them with drugs and alcohol to no end.What gambling casinos need are bombs dropped on them.Their nothing but sorry Italian thugs"beasts" running them.The moors,the caininites of Old Israel.The enemy of Gods people. What we are seeing in America is Babylon world wide destroying the world with drugs,gambling,and terror,to no end.Especially America,they want it destroyed.
Grandslam,
You are truly nuts.
Grandslam,
Can I get some of what you've been snorting?
Drone them all just like Al Qaeda!!!
About time why did it take so long. Too many people getting payoffs on both sides of the border. I had a piece of @!$%# like this run me and my pragnant wife off the road and tried to kill us. Stuck a gun 6 inches from my head and emptied it on us and missed every shot but i did not. 2 center mass to the chest with a 12 gauge and he did not even back up. That is why i carry a gun and sometime more than 1 and i sleep with six around me and two big dogs. This piece of @!$%# turns states evedence and went under witness protection and got a new name and a new life curtisy of the USA. All of it remains on my record even though the grand jury nobilled me. If you think it will never happen to you think again. It might not be you it might be your son or daughter.
This is all bull@!$%#,the whole of Mexico is involved,everybody is payed off and makes money even the militairy nothing will change this situation also the top leaders and police,they all get part of the loot, also the people involved (Americans)on our side of the border. I travel often in Mexico to visit my family living there and seen places were all these drugs are stored in the open in big boxes for everybody to see on a small airfield waiting for a small plane to land and to be flow out. This so called arrest will make no dent in the drug business at all and who knows this so called drug lord is walking the street again soon after everybody is payed off again,that's the way it works in Mexico,and ofcource the drug lords keep fighting each other for territory,this wil not change,watch my words, it's the money for many people involved also for Calderon.
Mexicans are some of the best con artists in the world. This stuff is done just to make Mexico look like it's actually fighting the drug cartels.
This is good news...for the Zetas.
@Den O'synn
You are absolutely right. All this did is help out the Zetas, the most vile, evil, bloodthirsty drug cartel in the world. I lived in the Rio Grande Valley for years and what has kept the Zetas in check from spreading their violence here is not American law enforcement, it is the Gulf Coast cartel. i mentioned this on another article and some idiot told me all the cartels are the same. They are not. This will affect innocent civilians in the worst way.
Freaking Wetbacks!! get a real job and stop hiding so we can see your ugly faces, bunch of spineless dogs.They are nothing without weapons because they are weak and not real men.
I'm sure you feel like a big strong man typing on your keyboard there, don't you?
There will be another thug to take this guys place.This is the result of a country who does not educate their citizens and keeps them in poverty. We should have been paying more attention to Mexico instead of sticking our nose in the middle east.