Mexican authorities have arrested a man identified as the son of the leader of the powerful Knights Templar drug cartel.
The leader is Servando Gomez, and the man arrested identified himself as his son Luis Alfredo Aguilera Esquivel, the secretariat of state for security of western Michoacan state said on Wednesday via Twitter.
Aguilera Esquivel and another man were arrested Monday in the town of Uruapan while allegedly collecting extortion payments from business people and carrying military-grade weapons, a source in the Michoacan prosecutor's office said.
Gomez, a retired teacher, goes by the nickname "El Tuta" and runs the cartel with a pseudo-religious doctrine, having taken over for previous leader Nazario Moreno. The government declared this man dead in 2010.
But self defence groups that rose up in Michoacan a year ago to take on the cartel say Moreno is actually alive and still calling the shots.
