Founder of Mexican gang Los Zetas arrested

Dec 13, 2011, 17:51 GMT

Mexico City - A founder of the Mexican criminal gang Los Zetas was arrested in a raid in which one of his bodyguards was killed and a soldier was injured, Mexican authorities said Tuesday.

Raul Lucio Hernandez Lechuga, also known as 'El Lucky,' who co-founded Los Zetas in the 1990s, was arrested Monday in the eastern state of Veracruz. Four of his aides were arrested too.

The Mexican Navy said there was a shootout in the raid on the Veracruz-Mexico highway, near the town of Cordoba, in which the alleged criminal was killed. The injured soldier does not have life-threatening wounds, the Navy said.

The authorities had been following Hernandez Lechuga's tracks for 'over one year.' Beyond being one of the founders of Los Zetas, he is believed to be a very close aide of the group's leader Heriberto Lazcano, known with the alias 'El Lazca.'

Both Hernandez Lechuga and El Lazca are in the list of Mexico's 37 most wanted criminals. A reward of over 1.1 million dollars had been offered for information leading to Hernandez Lechuga's arrest. The US Drug Enforcement Administration had offered a further 1 million dollars.

More than 45,000 people have been killed in Mexico in the past five years in incidents linked to organized crime.