US targets drug kingpin that Mexico fears to touch

DEA steps up moves to capture El Mencho as his home country struggles to get grip on cartel violence

WHEN cartel hitmen brought down a Mexican army helicopter in Guadalajara in May 2015, “El Mencho” began to become a household name.

Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, aka El Mencho – the elusive leader of Mexico’s fastest-growing drug cartel, New Generation Jalisco Cartel (CJNG) – armed his men with rocket-propelled grenade launchers to bring down the aircraft, in one of the most deadly attacks against state forces in Mexico’s more than decade-long drug war.

With Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán – formerly the world’s most wanted drug lord – now in jail for life in America, “El Mencho” is next in the US’S crosshairs.

With a $10 million (£8 million) bounty on his head, netting El Mencho seems more of a priority for Donald Trump than it does Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the Mexican president.

El Mencho, 53, is one of the US Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) most wanted criminals. Earlier this month, a strike by armed agency officers in the US resulted in 600 arrests and the seizure of some $20billion in cash from CJNG operatives.

Over a year into his administration, López Obrador has not presented a clear strategy to combat the increasingly powerful crime groups that in some areas are a parallel government.

His reticence is, perhaps, understandable. Since a campaign against organised crime began in 2006, some 150,000 Mexicans have been killed and more than 60,000 are missing. During his first year in office, Mexico recorded more than 34,500 murders – the highest annual death toll since the government started keeping track. DEA sources say El Mencho is organised and disciplined. They consider him more

‘El Chapo had flaws that led to his capture – essentially a love of women. El Mencho doesn’t have a lot of frailties’

violent than El Chapo and he is less interested in the glamorous lifestyle of his predecessor and more concerned with power than money.

“He will never put himself in a position to be captured and his people will fight to the death to protect him,” said Mike Vigil, a former DEA chief of international operations. “He’s more cunning than El Chapo. El Chapo had flaws that led to his capture – essentially his love of women clouded his mind. El Mencho doesn’t have a lot of frailties.”

The US and Mexico recently clashed over immigration and trade. Now tensions look set to rise amid differing approaches to CJNG and drug violence.

López Obrador seems increasingly reliant on the US to decapitate Mexico’s powerful criminal armies. Extraditions are at a high as notorious criminals are sent across the border to face justice. In late February, El Mencho’s own son

Rubén was extradited. Known as El Menchito (little Mencho) he had been in Mexican custody since 2015 and had reportedly been the second-in-command of his father’s criminal fiefdom.

Menchito’s extradition and those of prominent cartel members is a tacit acknowledgement by López Obrador’s government of the corruption and inefficiency plaguing Mexico’s justice system.

Yet López Obrador was unreceptive to the threat from the US president last year to designate the cartels as terrorist organisations, and accused his administration of challenging Mexico’s sovereignty.