Jose Maria Guizar Valencia, who is accused of overseeing an organization that traffics thousands of pounds of cocaine and methamphetamine to the United States each year, was nabbed Thursday while entering a hotel in a fashionable neighborhood in Mexico City, authorities said Friday. Known as Z-43, he is a dual US-Mexican citizen and is thought to have run the Zeta's south-eastern operations. After the death of Zetas cartel founder Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano in late 2012 and the arrest of his successor, Miguel Angel Treviño, in summer 2013, Guizar assumed control of his own Zetas faction based in southern Mexico, according to the US State Department, which offered up to $5 million for his arrest in 2014. Jose Maria Guizar Valencia, alias "Z43", was arrested Thursday in the upscale Mexico City neighborhood of La Roma "without the use of force", the head of the National Security Commission, Renato Sales, announced in a press conference. Under a 'Wanted' page online, the U.S. Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs said Guizar Valencia is "responsible for the importation of thousands of kilograms of cocaine and methamphetamine to the United States on a yearly basis" and faces separate U.S. drug trafficking indictments in Texas and Virginia.
Mexican authorities arrest American-born Jose Maria Guizar Valencia, the alleged leader of the Zetas drug cartel, as he was entering a hotel in Mexico City's upscale neighborhood of Roma.