La Paz Mexico: Sinaloa Cartel Leader Raydel López Uriarte Caught

 PGR helicopters were flying over the Indeco neighbourhood of La Paz
in an attempt to capture Raydel López Uriarte ¨El Muletas¨ the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel in the Baja California area and the successor of Teodoro García Simental "El Chiquilin," his brother.

Both were arrested Monday in La Paz, said Amy Roderick, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Mexico's Public Security Department confirmed the arrests in a brief statement, describing Manual Garcia as the gang's leader after his brother's arrest and Lopez as the current second-in-command.

It said the arrests were the result of leads starting with the capture of Teodoro Garcia in La Paz on Jan. 12, but offered no further details on the operations. Roderick said there were no U.S. indictments pending against the suspects.

The gang was known for its brutality, having executed, beheaded and mutilated hundreds of rivals in Tijuana,  across the U.S. border from San Diego. Gang members pinned notes to corpses and dissolved bodies in acid.

Manuel Garcia is the youngest of three brothers. The oldest brother, Marco Antonio, was arrested in a shootout with Mexican authorities in Tijuana in 2004. Teodoro Garcia was once considered a top hit man for Tijuana's dominant drug gang, the family-run Arellano-Felix cartel. He launched a new group affiliated with the Sinaloa cartel after law enforcement arrested or killed most of the Tijuana cartel leaders in 2008.

Across the country, more than 15,000 people have died in drug-related violence since President Felipe Calderon launched a crackdown on cartels when he took office 3 years ago. More than 2,500 of the killings occurred last year in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas.

The military announced Monday that soldiers had seized more than 12 tons of marijuana found beneath a false floor of a tractor trailer. The drugs were found during a routine search at a checkpoint near San Felipe, a town in the central part of the Baja California peninsula.