MexicoMexican drug cartel enforcer admits to killing 1,500
Mexican police in has arrested a drug cartel leader they say has admitted to ordering the murder of 1,500 people; Jose Antonio Acosta Hernandez, 33, known as “El Diego,” was the head of La Linea, a gang of hit men and corrupt police officers who acted as the armed wing of the Juarez drug cartel
Acosta Hernandez in custody // Source: noyon.mn
Mexican police in has arrested a drug cartel leader they say has admitted to ordering the murder of 1,500 people.
Jose Antonio Acosta Hernandez, 33, known as “El Diego,” was the head of La Linea, a gang of hit men and corrupt police officers who acted as the armed wing of the Juarez drug cartel.
He was held following a gun battle in the northern city of Chihuahua. The Guardian reports that Ramon Pequeno, head of the Mexican federal police anti-drug unit, said Acosta Hernandez had acknowledged ordering a total of 1,500 killings.
He said Acosta Hernandez was behind a series of notorious crimes in Ciudad Juarez, the most violent city in Mexico and one of the most dangerous in the world.
Those included the massacre of fifteen people, mostly teenagers, at a birthday party in January last year.
He was also blamed for a car-bomb attack that left two policemen dead.
The hitman was also accused of being the mastermind behind an attack last year that killed a U.S. consular official and her husband. The United States may seek his extradition over those killings.
A $1.2 million (£730,000) reward had been offered for his capture.
An estimated 41,000 people have been killed in violence related to organized crime in Mexico since December 2006.
Tony Payan of the University of Texas-El Paso, an expert on the drug war, described Acosta Hernandez as the “enforcer and the financial arm of the Juárez cartel.” Payan added that “He was a very hands-on manager that was practically involved in the management and organization personally brokering every single activity and every single murder…. This may be the break that we have all been waiting for.”
It may also weaken an already shattered Juárez cartel, he added.
President Felipe Calderon said the latest capture was “the biggest blow” to criminals in Ciudad Juarez since he sent 5,000 police in to the city in April last year.
