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MEXICO
Zetas drug cartel leader captured U.S. had offered $5 million reward for the arrest of ‘Z 43’ thorized to be quoted by name confirmed Guizar Valencia’s last name.
By Mark Stevenson A S S OCIAT E D PRE SS
MEXICO CITY — Authorities said Friday they have arrested dual U.S.-Mexican citizen Jose Maria Guizar Valencia, the alleged leader of the Zetas drug cartel. Mexican National Security Commissioner Renato Sales identified the suspect only as “Jose Maria,” but a federal official who was not au-
Valencia
Guizar Valencia is known by his Zetas code name, “Z 43.” The United States had offered a $5 million reward for his arrest. Sales said Guizar Va-
lencia was arrested Thursday in Mexico City’s trendy Roma neighborhood, which is known for its restaurants and cafes. The commissioner said the leader was one of the main generators of violence and had directed Zetas’ drug trafficking and other activities in southern Mexico. Under a ‘Wanted’ page online, the U.S. Bureau of International Narcotics
and Law Enforcement Affairs said Guizar Valencia is “responsible for the importation of thousands of kilograms of cocaine and methamphetamine to the United States on a yearly basis” and faces separate U.S. drug trafficking indictments in Texas and Virginia. It also said he had taken over territory in neighboring Guatemala. “Los Zetas, under the
MEXICO VIOLENCE
MEXICO CITY — Authorities in Mexico’s Gulf coast state of Veracruz announced charges Thursday of “forced disappearance” against 19 current or former state police officials and officers, saying they kidnapped and killed 15 innocent civilians. Veracruz Gov. Miguel Angel Yunes said the victims included two women and two minors, and the alleged perpetrators reached to very top of the police structure. Veracruz has been the scene of grisly police kidnap-killings before but in the cases announced Thursday, state police officials and their subordinate officers were apparently working for gangs or drug cartels, Yunes said. The crimes occurred during the 2010-2016 administration of former Gov. Javier Duarte, who himself is in prison facing corruption charges, and his predecessor.
years, and the once fearsome cartel has splintered into several factions. Even before that, the bureau said Guizar Valencia was “considered his own entity, working in concert but independently” of the main Zetas faction. Formed by deserters of an elite military unit, the Zetas are known for indiscriminate brutality, filling anonymous graves and roadsides with piles of victims’ bodies.
U.S. BORDER PATROL AGENT
19 police charged in kidnappings, killings A S S OCIAT E D PRE SS
command of Guizar Valencia, have murdered an untold number of Guatemalan civilians during the systematic overtake of the Guatemalan border region with Mexico during recent years,” the bureau said. It said Guizar Valencia was born in Tulare, California. The Zetas’ leadership has been decimated by the arrest and deaths of main capos in recent
Yunes said the state’s former Public Safety Secretary — in effect the top police commander — and his directors of special forces, prisons and state police headed a ring that abducted, tortured, interrogated, raped and killed private citizens. “These corrupt police, like the regime they served, placed themselves at the service of the criminals,” Yunes said. Two of the high-ranking officials were already under arrest on other charges, one is a fugitive, and the rest were placed under arrest. Yunes did not explain why they carried out the “forced disappearances,” which is defined as the abduction of a person by public servants when the victim is subsequently never found. But in 2015, state police in one Veracruz town abducted five youths and turned them over to the hyper-violent Jalisco cartel,
FBI FINDS NO EVIDENCE OF ATTACK
Violence continues on A8
ZAPATA BORDER PATROL
Jim Watson / AFP/Getty Images
A Border Patrol agent checks the area near the border fence on the US/Mexico border. A border patrol agent whose mysterious death prompted President Trump to renew his call for a wall along the border appears to have died as the result of an accident, according to an FBI probe.
Autopsy list ‘blunt force trauma’ as cause of death By Claudia Lauer Border Patrol / Courtesy photo
Border Patrol agents stationed in Zapata found over 1,000 pounds of marijuana in a vehicle on Wednesday.
Agents seize 1,033 pounds of marijuana S P ECIAL T O T HE T I ME S
Border Patrol agents from the Zapata Station seized 1,033 pounds of marijuana this week after responding to suspicious activity near Zapata. On Wednesday, agents encountered people loading bundles into a Chevrolet Traverse from a boat in Falcon Lake. As the agents approached the vehicle, the boat and suspects absconded back to Mexico. Agents discovered 46 bun-
dles of marijuana inside the vehicle. The pot had an estimated street value of $826,733.48. No arrests were made in this case. The marijuana was turned over to the Drug Enforcement Administration and the vehicle was seized by Border Patrol. In late January, agents seized 705 pounds of marijuana after responding to a report of multiple bundles floating in Falcon Lake near Zapata. Agents arZapata continues on A8
ASSOCIATED PRE SS
DALLAS — FBI officials said the investigation into the November death of a U.S. Border Patrol agent has yielded no evidence that there was a “scuffle, altercation or attack” more than two months after President Donald Trump and others used the suggestion of an attack to promote the building of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Investigators have conducted more than 650 interviews and involved 37 field offices in their probe, but have not found defin-
itive evidence of an attack, the FBI said in a statement Martinez Wednesday. The investigation will continue and the reward of up to $50,000 for information that closes the case will remain. “To date none of the more than 650 interviews completed, locations searched, or evidence collected and analyzed have produced evidence that would support the existence of a scuffle, altercation, or attack on November 18, 2017,”
said the release from the El Paso office of Emmerson Buie, a special agent in charge. Rogelio Martinez died from injuries he sustained while he and his partner were responding to reports of unknown activity the night of Nov. 18 near Van Horn, a Texas town near the Mexico border about 110 miles (175 kilometers) southeast of El Paso. Martinez’s partner radioed for help before both agents were airlifted to the hospital, where 36-year-old Martinez died a few hours later. The partner— who suffered from head injuries— was released from the
hospital after several days, but told investigators he could not remember the incident. The FBI release Wednesday noted that a dispatcher, who was among the people interviewed by investigators, took the call from the surviving agent. According to the release, the dispatcher wrote in his log that, “(He) thinks they (both agents) ran into a culvert.” An autopsy report from the El Paso County medical examiner’s office released Tuesday night shed little light on what caused the serious injuries that Martinez FBI continues on A8