MEXICO CITY (AP) _ A former police officer who allegedly admits ordering 1,500 killings during a campaign of terror as a drug gang chieftain along the U.S. border has been captured in northern Mexico, federal officials said Sunday.
Jose Antonio Acosta Hernandez also is a suspect in last year's slaying of a U.S. consulate employee near a border crossing in Ciudad Juarez.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon said through his Twitter account that Acosta's capture is ``the biggest blow'' to organized crime in Ciudad Juarez since he sent about 5,000 federal police to the city in April 2010 to try to curb violence in one of the world's most dangerous cities.
Acosta, 33, was caught Friday in the northern city of Chihuahua along with his bodyguard, said Ramon Pequeno, head of the federal police anti-drug unit. Without offering details on the capture, he said the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration helped by providing information. Acosta's arrest was not confirmed until Sunday, just before officials displayed him to journalists in Mexico City.
Wearing a long-sleeve dress shirt, the short man with a cleft chin and thick eyebrows limped as he was escorted by two masked federal police officers to stand before the cameras.
Pequeno said at the news conference that Acosta, nicknamed ``El Diego,'' told federal police he ordered 1,500 killings. Investigators believe he was the mastermind of an attack last year that killed a U.S. consulate employee, her husband and the husband of another consulate worker in Ciudad Juarez, he said.
U.S. prosecutors also want to try him in that case. A federal indictment filed in the western district of Texas says Acosta and nine others conspired to kill the three.
Pequeno said he expects an extradition request from the U.S. government.
Mexican authorities have identified Acosta as head of La Linea, a gang of hit men and corrupt police officers who act as enforcers for the Juarez Cartel.
Acosta acknowledged he ordered the most notorious crimes such as the detonation of a July 2010 car bomb and a massacre that killed 15 people, mostly teenagers, at a birthday party, both in Ciudad Juarez, Pequeno said.
A former state police officer, Acosta built a criminal empire, not only leading a gang of contract killers for the Juarez Cartel but also extorting businesses and kidnapping for large ransoms, said Tony Payan, an expert on the drug war at the University of Texas-El Paso.
``This is an enforcer and the financial arm of the Juarez Cartel,'' said Payan, whose research comes from both newspaper accounts and people living in Ciudad Juarez.
Payan said Acosta's law enforcement past explains how the cartel could gather intelligence using informants within local police forces.
Payan also said Acosta's arrest could reduce the number of murders in Juarez, where more than 3,000 homicides were recorded last year.
``He was a very hands-on manager that was practically involved in the management and organization, personally brokering every single activity and every single murder,'' Payan said. ``This may be the break that we have all been waiting for.''
It may also weaken an already shattered Juarez Cartel, he said.
The cartel, allegedly led by Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, has been losing ground to the Sinaloa drug trafficking organization, headed by Joaquin ``El Chapo'' Guzman in a three-year battle over the border city's smuggling corridors. But Carrillo Fuentes and alleged top lieutenant Juan Pablo Ledezma remain at large.
<한글기사>
1500명청부살해, 알고보니 33세 갱단두목
(멕시코시티 AFP.AP=연합뉴스) 멕시코에서 지금까지 미국 영사관 직원을 포함해 약 1천500명을 청부살해한 암살단의 두목이 붙잡혔다고 현지 경찰 고위간부가 31일 밝혔다.
연방경찰 대마약국 라몬 페케노 국장은 기자들에게 지난해 미국 접경 도시 시우다드 후아레스 주재 미국 영사관 직원 피살사건의 배후로 '엘 디에고'라는 별명으로 유명한 호세 안토니오 아코스타 에르난데스(33)를 지난 29일 북부 치와와에서 총격 전 끝에 검거했다고 말했다.
아코스타의 체포 사실은 수도 멕시코시티에서 이날 그의 신원을 언론에 공개할때까지 발표되지 않았다.
연방경찰의 신문 과정에서 아코스타는 1천500건의 암살지령을 내렸다고 진술한것으로 페케노 국장은 소개했다.
페케노 국장은 아코스타가 시우다드 후아레스에서 작년 7월 일어난 차량폭탄 폭파와 그해 1월 발생한 대부분 10대인 파티 참석자 15명을 죽인 학살극 같은 악질적인 범행을 자신이 명령했다고 자백했다고 말했다.
멕시코 당국은 아코스타가 후아레스 마약 카르텔을 위해 살인청부를 하는 살인청부업자와 부패 경찰로 이뤄진 갱단 '라 리네아'의 두목으로 믿어왔다.
수사관들은 아코스타를 시우다드 후아레스의 미국 영사관 직원과 그의 남편, 또다른 직원의 남편을 습격한 사건의 배후로 보고 있다.
미국 검찰 당국은 아코스타를 재판에 넘기기를 원하고 있으며 텍사스주 서부 지구에서 영사관 직원 등 3명을 살해한 아코스타와 공범 9명이 기소된 상태다.
페케노 국장은 미국 정부가 아코스타 등에 대한 신병인도를 요청할 것으로 예상했다.
공식 자료로는 펠리페 칼데론 대통령이 마약 카르텔에 대한 단속을 군에 맡긴 2006년 12월 이래 멕시코에선 조직범죄와 연루된 폭력사태로 목숨을 잃은 희생자 수가 4만1천명으로 추정된다.
아코스타가 암약한 시우다드 후아레스는 멕시코에서 가장 폭력적인 도시로 꼽히며 이제껏 마약거래와 관련해 3천100명이 살해됐다.
