Mexican cartel leader’s wife captured: Govt

Guadalajara (Mexico), May 28

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Mexican authorities have arrested the wife of a powerful drug cartel leader in the city of Guadalajara, the interior minister said on Monday.

Rosalinda Gonzalez Valencia, the wife of Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, alias “El Mencho,” was taken into custody by Mexican navy agents, the minister said.

Cervantes heads Jalisco New Generation, one of Mexico’s most powerful drug cartels.

“This woman is a likely administrator of both economic and legal assets of this criminal organisation. She had been sought on an organised crime warrant,” Interior Minister Alfonso Navarrete told a news conference.

Gonzalez was put into preventive detention and has been brought before a judge, Navarrete said.

Security forces, civil defence and emergency medical services were put on alert in case of retaliatory attacks by the cartel, sources in the Jalisco state prosecutor’s office said.

Troops were deployed to guard approaches to the city, Mexico’s second largest.

On Monday, Guadalajara was shaken by the attempted assassination of Jalisco Labour Secretary Luis Najera, a former state prosecutor who was attacked by armed men in a restaurant in the city centre.

Assailants torched a passenger bus after the attack, killing an eight-month-old baby.

Najera suffered only minor injuries but seven other people were more seriously wounded. One of the attackers was killed.

The Mexican government estimates that the Jalisco New Generation cartel has amassed a USD 50 billion fortune. It has a strong presence in nine Mexican states and connections with criminal organisations in the United States, Europe, Asia and Latin America.

In recent years, it has carried out attacks against military and police targets, including the 2015 downing of a military helicopter in which 20 soldiers and a policewoman were killed.

In December of that year, authorities said police and soldiers arrested Antonio Oseguera Cervantes, El Mencho’s brother, months after arresting Nemesio Oseguera’s son, Ruben Oseguera Gonzalez, known as “El Menchito.” — AFP