Arnoldo Rueda Medina

Arnoldo Rueda Medina
Born (1969-12-15) 15 December 1969
Michoacán, Mexico
Other names La Minsa
Occupation La Familia Michoacana leader
Criminal charge Organized crime, drug trafficking
Criminal status In prison (Penal del Altiplano)

Arnoldo Rueda Medina (born 15 December 1969) is a former Mexican drug lord and high-ranking leader of La Familia Michoacana, a drug trafficking organization which is based in Michoacán, Mexico.[1][2]

Rueda Medina was allegedly in charge of operations under La Familia leaders Nazario Moreno González and José de Jesús Méndez Vargas, who are both on Mexico's most-wanted list of drug suspects.[3]

Criminal career

Rueda Medina was born on 15 December 1969 in the state of Michoacán,[4] and first worked as a tortilla seller before deciding to start his criminal career by stealing automobiles in the year 2000.[5] In 2004, he became the La Familia Michoacana's hitmen lieutenant responsible for tracking down cartel rivals and ordering gunmen to kill members of the Milenio Cartel, which had an alliance with the Sinaloa Cartel.[6]

He reportedly started working for the cartel in 2000, when the drug lords Carlos Rosales Mendoza, José de Jesús Méndez Vargas, and Nazario Moreno González where fighting against the Valencia brothers of the Milenio organization for the control of the smuggling routes in western Mexico.[6] During the mid-2000s, Rosales Mendoza headed the cartel and aligned with the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas to fight the Milenio Cartel. But after the arrests of Rosales Mendoza and of the Gulf Cartel leader Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, Rueda Medina's group broke relations with Los Zetas along with Méndez Vargas and Moreno González. By 2006, he was in charge of coordinating the cartel's narcotics fabrication and smuggling operations.[6] He was also responsible for assigning regional leaders of the cartel, contacting international drug suppliers, and infiltrating several police forces where La Familia Michoacana held a stronghold.[3]

Arrest

After six months of police intelligence, Rueda Medina was arrested on 11 July 2009 by elements of the Mexican Federal Police while he was arriving at his residence in the capital city of Morelia, Michoacán.[7][8]

Minutes later, a group of more than two dozen gunmen tossed fragmentation grenades and opened fire on the federal police offices where Rueda Medina was being held.[9] Rueda Medina was then taken to Mexico City by dozens of policemen and soldiers. A few hours after Rueda's arrest, convoys of heavily armed gunmen ambushed federal forces across the western state of Michoacán. The gunmen tossed hand grenades and opened fire on police stations and at the hotel installations where the officers slept in six major Michoacan cities. There were also attacks in the states of Guerrero and Guanajuato.[9] Five federal officers and two soldiers were killed that day, with ten federal policemen wounded by the reprisals.[1]

Two days later, on 13 July, La Familia gunmen continued the retaliation with an ambush to a police bus, killing 12 federal agents.[10][11] The 11 men and one woman had been kidnapped, tortured, and killed while off-duty as a retaliation attack for the arrest of Rueda Medina.[12] The killing of the agents, whose bodies were found along with a warning note, showed that La Familia Michoacana was eager to directly attack the Federal government of Mexico.[13]

Rueda has been convicted of multiple crimes and is being held at Penal del Altiplano, a maximum security prison.[14]

Kingpin Act sanction

On 25 February 2010, the United States Department of the Treasury sanctioned Rueda Medina under the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act (sometimes referred to simply as the "Kingpin Act"), for his involvement in drug trafficking along with twenty-one other international criminals and ten foreign entities.[15] The act prohibited U.S. citizens and companies from doing any king of business activity with him, and virtually froze all his assets in the U.S.[16]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 "Gunmen launch deadly raids in central Mexico". MSNBC. The Associated Press. 11 July 2009. Archived from the original on 15 November 2012. Retrieved 16 November 2012.
  2. ↑ "La Familia Michoacana – Leadership Chart" (PDF). United States Department of the Treasury. 15 April 2009. Archived from the original (PDF) on 15 November 2012. Retrieved 16 November 2012.
  3. 1 2 "El Minsa, brazo operativo de La Familia". Proceso (in Spanish). 13 July 2009. Archived from the original on 16 November 2012. Retrieved 16 November 2012.
  4. ↑ Money and Finance: Treasury: Treasury, PT. 500-End, Revised as of July 1, 2010. United States Government Printing Office. 28 September 2010. p. 764. ISBN 0160860032. Retrieved 16 November 2012.
  5. ↑ Riva Palacio, Raymundo (19 July 2009). "La Minsa: La voluntad de su Dios hizo que sobreviviera Rueda Medina". Zócalo Saltillo (in Spanish). Archived from the original (PDF) on 16 November 2012. Retrieved 16 November 2012.
  6. 1 2 3 "Arnoldo Rueda 'La Minsa', de robar carros a capo del narco". Terra Networks (in Spanish). 13 July 2009. Archived from the original on 16 November 2012. Retrieved 16 November 2012.
  7. ↑ Malkin, Elizabeth (12 July 2009). "Mexico Posts Are Blitzed After Arrest in Drug War". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 16 November 2012. Retrieved 16 November 2012.
  8. ↑ "Oleada de ataques en México". El Mundo (in Spanish). 12 July 2009. Archived from the original on 16 November 2012. Retrieved 16 November 2012.
  9. 1 2 Nájar, Alberto (12 July 2009). "Ofensiva narco en México". BBC Mundo (in Spanish). Archived from the original on 16 November 2012. Retrieved 16 November 2012.
  10. ↑ "Mexican police, soldiers killed in multicity attacks by drug gang". CNN. Time Warner Company. 12 July 2009. Archived from the original on 16 November 2012. Retrieved 16 November 2012.
  11. ↑ Sosa Cabios, Andrea (14 July 2009). "Bloody revenge in Mexico's drug war". Monsters and Critics. Archived from the original on 16 November 2012. Retrieved 16 November 2012.
  12. ↑ Ellingwood, Ken (15 July 2009). "12 slain in Mexico were federal police officers". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on 16 November 2012. Retrieved 16 November 2012.
  13. ↑ Leonard, Tom (19 July 2009). "Mexican police officers arrested over murder of federal agents". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 16 November 2012. Retrieved 16 November 2012.
  14. ↑ Gómez, Francisco (4 September 2009). "Trasladan a La Minsa al penal del Altiplano". El Universal (in Spanish). Archived from the original on 16 November 2012. Retrieved 16 November 2012.
  15. ↑ "DESIGNATIONS PURSUANT TO THE FOREIGN NARCOTICS KINGPIN DESIGNATION ACT" (PDF). United States Department of the Treasury. 15 May 2014. p. 10. Archived (PDF) from the original on 28 May 2014. Retrieved 28 May 2014.
  16. ↑ "An overview of the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act" (PDF). United States Department of the Treasury. 2009. p. 1. Archived from the original (PDF) on 28 May 2014. Retrieved 28 May 2014.

External links

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