Worst Killer In Americas Puportedly Captured

There have been something on the order of 4,000 murders in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, which is just across the border from El Paso, Texas, in the last fifteen months. Now, Mexican law enforcement officials have arrested a purported drug gang leader, Arturo Gallegos Castrellon, 32, leader of Los Aztecas, who they claim has confessed to having ordered 80% of those killings personally, including a massacre of fifteen teenagers at a January 31 birthday party, a U.S. Consulate employee and an El Paso County, Texas jail guard. The confessions, if true, put him in the same league of Osama bin Laden for the sheer carnage he has caused.

Mexican officials have something of a track record of reporting confessions while not obtaining convictions, however, and it isn't clear why someone would make such a broad confession if it were true, so the report has to be viewed with some skepticism. It is one of several high profile cartel leader arrested or killed in the past year in Mexico.

In July, Mexican authorities announced that they had arrested another gang leader, Jesús Ernesto Chávez Castillo, known as the Camel. . . . Over the past year, the Mexican government has had several notable successes against the drug cartels, arresting or killing top leaders of the Beltrán Leyva drug trafficking organization, and a high-ranking leader of the Sinaloa cartel. Most recently, marines surrounded and killed Antonio Ezequiel Cárdenas Guillén, a top leader of the Gulf cartel in Matamoros on Nov. 5.

The violence is mostly attributed to a turf war between rival gangs in the wake of a militarized assault on drug gangs led by Mexican President President Felipe Calderón that has sprung up in different regions across the country killing tens of thousands of people.

Police in Brazil meanwhile have made a major effort to retake the slums of Rio from criminals in a massive armed effort that left 36 suspects dead.