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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Mexican police capture top cartel capo ‘La Tuta’ Gomez

Federal police escort Servando “La Tuta” Gomez, leader of the Knights Templar cartel, Friday in Mexico City. (Associated Press)
Associated Press

MEXICO CITY – Servando “La Tuta” Gomez, a former schoolteacher who became one of Mexico’s most-wanted drug lords as head of the Knights Templar cartel, was captured early Friday by federal police as he tried to sneak out of a house wearing a baseball cap and a scarf to hide his identity.

Gomez was arrested at a house in Morelia, the capital of the western state of Michoacan, along with eight bodyguards and associates toting a grenade launcher, three grenades, a machine pistol and assault rifles, National Security Commissioner Monte Alejandro Rubido said.

Gomez and his accomplices were arrested without a shot fired, after a months-long intelligence stakeout in which his associates were identified when they gathered on his birthday Feb. 6 with cakes, soft drinks and food, he said.

Rubido said the key break came months ago when agents identified one of Gomez’s most-trusted messengers. A series of such liaisons had apparently supplied Gomez with food, clothing and medicine when he was earlier hiding out in the mountains.

Interior Secretary Miguel Angel Osorio Chong said that “we have caught the most important target in the fight against organized crime.”

The 49-year-old Gomez led the Knights Templar, a quasi-religious criminal group that once exercised what Osorio Chong called “absolute control” over Michoacan.

The cartel orchestrated politics, controlled commerce, dictated rules and preached a code of ethics around devotion to God and family, even as it murdered and plundered. The gang lost power when the federal government took over the state to try to restore order in January 2014 after vigilante groups rose up against the cartel. But Gomez evaded capture for more than a year, while other Knights Templar leaders were captured or killed.

Mexico’s government had offered a $2 million reward for his capture, and he also was wanted in the United States for conspiracy to import and distribute cocaine.

Also Friday, authorities announced that Gomez’s younger brother, Flavio, had been arrested in Merida in eastern Yucatan state. Flavio Gomez allegedly handled the gang’s finances.