Mexican military wins major victory in drug war

A Mexican army official announced that the leader of the Tijuana cartel, Luis Fernando Sachez Arellano, was captured in a raid during the afternoon of June 23.

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LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - One of the most powerful cartels in the 1990s, the cartel controlled much of the drugs which flowed through the northern Mexican city of Tijuana into the United States. However, the cartel received a serious blow after four of the five brothers who led it were arrested, and the fifth was killed.

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Arellano is the nephew of one of the Arellano Felix brothers who originally founded the cartel.

The government had offered a 30-million-peso reward ($2.3 million) for information leading to Arellano's capture.

The Tijuana cartel was founded in the late 1980s by Benjamin Arellano Felix, and was taken over by his younger brother Francisco Javier after his arrest in 2002. Javier was captured by the U.S. Coast Guard off Baja California in 2006, after which his brother Eduardo took over until he himself was arrested in 2008.

The most violent of the brothers, Ramon, was killed in a shoot-out with police in 2002, and the oldest brother, Francisco Rafael, was shot dead by gunmen disguised as clowns during his birthday party.

Mexican officials believed that in recent years the cartel has been run by Arellano and his mother Enedina. The cartel is believed to have killed and tortured rivals in Mexico and the U.S., dissolving their dead bodies in vats of acid.

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