Mexican security officials said today they have captured the man who has led the Juarez drug cartel following last year's arrest of Vicente Carrillo Fuentes.
National Security Commissioner Monte Alejandro Rubido said Jesus Salas Aguayo was caught Friday in the municipality of Villa Ahumada, about 75 miles (130 kilometers) south of the border metropolis of Ciudad Juarez. He said one of Salas' bodyguards was killed and another arrested.
Rubido said Salas Aguayo is linked with a 2010 car bombing in Ciudad Juarez as well as a 2012 bar attack that killed 15 and the 2009 slaying of a protected witness in El Paso.
The website of the US Drug Enforcement Administration says Salas Aguayo is wanted in the United States for possession and distribution of narcotics and for conspiracy.
The Juarez Cartel has largely controlled trafficking around Ciudad Juarez, but Salas Aguayo is far less prominent than the cartel's former leader, Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, who was arrested in October. He, in turn, was much less flamboyant than his brother Amado, who was nicknamed "Lord of the Skies" for flying planeloads of drugs into the US Amado Carrillo Fuentes died in a botched cosmetic surgery in 1997.
The announcement comes days after officials announced they had captured another man who recently inherited leadership of the Gulf Cartel.
The arrest of Jose Tiburcio Hernandez Fuentes set off gunfights and blockades of burning vehicles that left at least three people dead near Mexico's border with the United States.
