Mexico arrests suspected mastermind of mass kidnapping

Joel Javier Rodriguez Fuentes. Photo courtesy of milenio.com

Mexican authorities have arrested the man suspected of ordering the murder of 13 young people who were kidnapped in a brazen daytime abduction in the capital last year, AFP reports.

The Mexico City prosecutor's office said Joel Javier Rodriguez Fuentes was caught Wednesday in Nextlalpan, a town north of Mexico City, carrying drugs.

The city's prosecutors said in a statement Thursday that Rodriguez Fuentes was considered the "material and intellectual author" of the May 2013 crime, which tarnished the capital's image as a relative oasis from Mexico's drug wars.

Nine accomplices told investigators that Rodriguez Fuentes ordered and helped carry out the mass kidnapping at the Heaven bar, located a short walk from the US embassy and federal police offices.

The victims' decomposed bodies were found three months later in a mass grave outside the capital.

The statement did not indicate the motive for the crime but, Mexico City Attorney General Rodolfo Rios has linked it to a gang's vendetta for the murder of one of its drug dealers.