Mexican gang suspect ‘admits 1,500 murders’

Police in Mexico say a suspected gang leader they have arrested has confessed to ordering the murder of 1,500 people.

Jose Antonio Acosta Hernandez, known as ‘El Diego’, is said to be the leader of the La Linea gang in Ciudad Juarez, the country’s most violent city which borders the US.

He is thought to have been behind the first known car bomb attack in Mexico’s drugs war, which killed four people last year.

Acosta Hernandez is also wanted by the American authorities. Police suspect him of masterminding an attack in 2010 that killed a US consulate worker and her husband.

La Linea’s members work for the Juarez cartel, which controls some of the main drug trafficking routes into the States.

The Mexican government had offered a reward worth nearly 900,000 euros for information leading to El Diego’s arrest.

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