Mexico City, Mar 24 (EFE).- Mexican authorities said a purported regional commander of the notorious Los Zetas drug cartel was arrested during an operation in the northeastern border city of Nuevo Laredo.
The suspect, Ramiro Perez Ramos, was one of 14 priority targets of the security strategy launched in March 2014 in Tamaulipas state, the Tamaulipas Coordination Group, or GCT, which comprises federal and state security forces, said in a statement.
He was captured Monday along with four other suspects, while authorities also seized three rifles, three ammunition clips, a hand grenade, rounds of ammunition and drugs during the operation, the GCT added.
Perez Ramos was the Zetas' head of operations in the northern states of Coahuila, Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas, the Government, Defense and Navy secretariats, the federal Attorney General's Office, and the National Security Commission said in a joint statement.
It added that Perez Ramos had aspirations to take over leadership of the Zetas after the March 4 arrest of the cartel's reputed kingpin, Omar Treviño Morales.
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.
