Mexican Drug Kingpin Captured


One of Mexico’s most-wanted and most-powerful drug traffickers, Ivan Velazquez Caballero, better known as “El Taliban,” has been captured, Mexican officials announced Thursday. A known leader of a hyperviolent faction of the Zetas cartel, Velazquez Caballero is thought to be behind to a recent surge in killings and violence in northern Mexico, stemming from a riff with another top Zetas leader, Miguel Angel Trevino Morales. The arrest of El Taliban marks the third major alleged cartel leader to be captured by Mexican authorities this month, signaling that the U.S.-backed strategy to remove the leadership of the country’s top drug-smuggling organizations may be working.