Cartel leader’s wife captured in Mexico

MEXICAN authorities have arrested the wife of a powerful drug cartel leader in the city of Guadalajara.

Rosalinda Gonzalez Valencia, the wife of Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, alias “El Mencho”, was taken into custody by Mexican navy agents, a government minister said.

Cervantes heads the Jalisco New Generation, one of Mexico’s most powerful cartels.

“This woman is a likely administrator of both economic and legal assets of this criminal organisation. She had been sought on an organised crime warrant,” Interior Minister Alfonso Navarrete said.

Gonzalez was put into preventive detention and had been brought before a judge, Navarrete said.

Security forces, civil defence and emergency medical services were put on alert in case of retaliatory attacks by the cartel, sources in the Jalisco prosecutor’s office said.

Troops were deployed to guard approaches to the city, Mexico’s second largest.

Yesterday, Guadalajara was shaken by the attempted assassination of Jalisco labour secretary Luis Najera, a former state prosecutor who was attacked by armed men in a restaurant in the city centre.

The assailants torched a bus after the attack, killing an eight-month-old baby.

Najera suffered only minor injuries but seven other people were more seriously wounded. One attacker was killed.

The Mexican government estimates the Jalisco New Generation cartel has amassed a $50-billion (R622-billion) fortune. It has a strong presence in nine Mexican states and links with criminal organisations in the US, Europe, Asia and Latin America. – AFP