Mexico captures Knights Templar drug cartel leader ‘La Tuta’

Mexican federal police captured Knights Templar drug cartel leader Servando Gomez on Friday, taking down one of the country’s most wanted fugitives whose gang tormented the western state of Michoacan. Gomez, alias “La Tuta,” was detained without a shot fired in Morelia, Michoacan’s capital, a National Security Commission official told AFP on condition of anonymity. Gomez, a 49-year-old former schoolteacher whose Knights Templar cartel tormented western Michoacan state, smuggled drugs to the US and illegally shipped iron ore to China. Gomez, 49, was taken to Mexico City and frogmarched in front of television cameras, wearing a black sweater and jeans as two masked federal police officers held him down by the neck and led him into a helicopter.

Today we have achieved the most important objective in the fight against organized crime: The detention of the most wanted criminal in all of Mexico.

Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong

The balding, goateed kingpin had eluded authorities last year despite a massive manhunt in the mountains of Michoacan with help from a “rural defense” force comprised of former vigilantes, who had taken up arms against the Knights Templar. With his arrest, the authorities have now taken down all the top leaders of the cult-like cartel, dealing a huge blow to a group that once dominated the agricultural and mining state through murder, kidnappings and extortion.

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