Mexico police claim capture of Zetas co-founder
By DUDLEY ALTHAUS
Jan. 18, 2011, 7:00PM
Alexandre Meneghini Associated Press
Federal Police agents escort Flavio Mendez Santiago, center, alias "El Amarillo," alleged member and co-founder of the Zetas drug cartel, during a presentation to the media in Mexico City, Tuesday.
MEXICO CITY — The Mexican federal police said Tuesday that they've captured a founding member of the Zetas, the vicious gangsters based along the South Texas border, who directed the groups' narcotics and human smuggling operations throughout southern Mexico.
Flavio Mendez Santiago, 35, known by his gangster nickname of El Amarillo, or the "Yellow Fellow," was captured Monday in a town just outside Oaxaca City, the state capital, said Ramon Pequeño, head of the federal police's anti-narcotics operations.
Mendez ranks 29th on a list of Mexico's reputed 37 most dangerous and powerful gangsters that officials put together two years ago. Twenty of the men on the list are now either dead or jailed. The Mexican government had offered a $1.25 million reward for his capture.
Gangland massacre
The Zetas control migrant smuggling through much of Mexico, officials say. They have been accused of massacring 72 mostly Central American migrants last August near the border at Brownsville. And they're blamed for the December disappearance of 40 other migrants in southern Oaxaca state.
"As the one in charge of the southern part of the country he was surely involved" in those crimes, Pequeño said of Mendezin northeastern Tamaulipas state.
Feuding groups
The government's National Human Rights Commission recently said that gangsters kidnapped 10,000 migrants - often in groups of 50 or more - in just one six-month period last year. Mexico's immigration agency rejected that as an exaggeration but has announced a purge of its ranks.
Police said Mendez was one of the first men recruited into the Zetas organization, whose members began as assassins and bodyguards for Osiel Cardenas, then head of the so-called Gulf Cartel based in Mexican cities along the lower Rio Grande Valley.
The Zetas split from the Gulf Cartel a year ago. The two gangs have since feuded, accounting for many of the 15,000 murders tallied in Mexico's drug wars last year.
Led by Mendez and others, the Zetas moved into Guatemala three years ago .
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