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5 Zetas cartel members arrested in northern Mexico


    Mexico City, Mar 17 (EFE).- Five suspected members of the Los Zetas drug cartel were arrested in separate operations in the northern Mexican state of Nuevo Leon, federal officials said.

    Daniel Menera Sierra, suspected of being a regional leader of the drug cartel, and three associates were arrested in the city of San Pedro Garza Garcia, National Security Commissioner Monte Alejandro Rubido said in a statement.

    One of the men arrested with the 33-year-old Menera Sierra is suspected of being in charge of smuggling drugs by air from Colombia into Mexico.

    Menera Sierra, who is originally from the western state of Michoacan, operated out of Piedras Negras, a city in Coahuila state, Rubido said.

    "He was presumably in charge of moving the drugs, as well as the traffic in migrants into the United States via the Piedras Negras, Coahuila-Anahuac, Nuevo Leon corridor," Rubido said.

    Menera Sierra's arrest led to the capture of Ernesto Balderas Medrano, a 38-year-old suspected cartel leader, in the city of Apodaca.

    The arrests were made with information obtained following the capture of Zetas cartel boss Oscar Omar Treviño, known as "Z-42," on March 4 in Nuevo Leon.

    After several years as the armed wing of the Gulf cartel, Los Zetas, considered Mexico's most violent criminal organization, went into the drug business on their own account in early 2010 and now control several lucrative territories.

    The cartel was behind the massacre of 72 migrants at a ranch in northeastern Mexico in 2010 and the fire at the Casino Royale in Monterrey, the capital of Nuevo Leon, that killed 52 people in 2011.