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The founder and former Los Zetas cartel leader Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, 57, has been deported to Mexico after completing a lengthy US prison sentence. He headed the cartel until his capture by Mexican forces near Matamoros in 2003.
Under his leadership, the group became one of the most powerful and brutal hit squads in the Mexican drug wars.
US immigration officials handed Cárdenas over to Mexican police at the Otay border crossing, where he was quickly re-arrested and taken to El Altiplano maximum security jail in Mexico state. Mexican prosecutors said he had been arrested on charges of murder and organised crime dating back to his time as one of the most powerful drug lords in Mexico.
Cárdenas Guillén's rise through the ranks of the Gulf cartel in the 1990s was reportedly marked by violence, sometimes killing of his allies earning him the moniker "Mata Amigos" (killer of friends). His infamy, however, stemmed from recruiting members of Mexico's elite special forces to serve as assassins and enforcers.
The law enforcers-turned-contract killers became known as Los Zetas. The brutal methods they used, such as decapitating and dismembering their victims, quickly spread terror through the north-eastern part of Mexico which was their stronghold. By the early 2000s, Cárdenas Guillén was one of the most wanted men in Mexico.
Mexican security forces managed to apprehend him in his home state of Tamaulipas in 2003 after a bloody gun battle. Aware of the power the gang leader wielded in the area, the security forces quickly flew him to the capital, Mexico City, were he was put into pre-trial detention.
In 2007, he was extradited to the US.
There, he was charged not just with trafficking tonnes of cocaine into the US but also with threatening to assault and murder federal agents.
He pleaded guilty in 2010 and was sentenced to 25 years in jail. Having served a large part of his sentence, he was released in August of 2024 from federal prison in Terre Haute, Idaho, and handed over to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. This paved the way for his deportation to Mexico on Monday.
Mexican prosecutors said there were seven federal cases still open against Cárdenas Guillén and that he could be sentenced to a total of more than 700 years in prison if found guilty on all charges.
