Drug Gang Leader Arrested in Mexico Confesses to Killings

[alp227]

Source: The New York Times

MEXICO CITY – A notorious drug gang leader has been captured and has confessed to ordering most killings in the battle-scarred border city of Ciudad Juárez since August 2009, including the drive-by shootings of a United States consular employee and her husband, Mexico’s federal police said on Sunday.

Arturo Gallegos Castrellón, 32, leader of the Los Aztecas gang, was arrested along with two other gang leaders in a Juárez neighborhood on Saturday, said Luis Cardenas Palomino, chief of the regional security division of the federal police.

Mr. Cardenas said Mr. Gallegos claimed to have ordered 80 percent of the killings here in the last 15 months. . “He is in charge of the whole organization of Los Aztecas in Ciudad Juárez,” Mr. Cardenas told local reporters at a news conference in Juárez. “All the instructions for the murders committed in Ciudad Juárez pass through him.”

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/29/world/americas/29mexico.html

[emilyg]

1. Glad they got the bastard.

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

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[webDude]

3. Look for more killings as they fill the vacumn.

[a la izquierda]

4. Nobody seems to realize this reality...

or they don't care. Calderon's policies are like this: take a few steps forward with arrests like these, and then jump ten steps back when all hell breaks loose as a result of these arrests.
It's like the 70s FBI vs. the Mafia all over again, except the war against the narcos is on a much larger scale, involving the military and federal police.

[timo]

5. yup

get ready for some good ol power struggle killing

[a la izquierda]

7. Violence begets violence.

The Mexican government seems to ignore this fact.

[truthisfreedom]

6. That's pretty remarkable. Does the article say why he confessed?

You'd think he'd want to keep his mouth shut. This seems highly unusual. I'm not a NYT member so I can't read the article.

[EmilyAnne]

9. Because he was caught, he needs to send a very loud message to the Juarez Cartel and La Linea.

He wants them to know that he isn't talking and that he is willing to take the fall.

He's doing it to save his family's lives because such families are often slaughtered.

[EmilyAnne]

8. This is ridiculous. Los Aztecas is a street and prison gang.

Eighty percent of the Juarez killings of the last 15 months, my butt.

He's a fall guy for La Linea and the even bigger Juarez cartel.
Notice that they say all the instructions for the murder "pass through him."
Meaning, they neither come from him nor are they carried out by him.
He's just another sicario in this bloody drug war and he has already been replaced.

He probably "confessed" so much to save his family's lives.