Mexican special forces arrest top commander of cartel and his alleged money launderer

Arrests of Audias Flores and César Alejandro ‘N’ lead to gunmen blocking roads, as US embassy warns employees to avoid Reynosa after earlier arrest The Mexican authorities have arrested two top criminals, one of them a close ally of the slain founder of the Jalisco New Generation cartel (CJNG), prompting gunmen to block roads in the western state of Nayarit. Audias Flores, known as “El Jardinero”, is a regional commander in control of swathes of CJNG territory along Mexico’s Pacific coast. He was considered a potential successor to Nemesio Oseguera, alias “El Mencho”, who ran the cartel and was killed in a security operation in February. Security forces surrounded a cabin in El Mirador where Flores was being protected by a perimeter of about 30 pickup trucks and more than 60 gunmen, according to a press release from Mexico’s navy, which led the operation. Flores’s escorts scattered as a diversion but he was located as he tried to hide in a drainage ditch, it added. “The operation was carried out with surgical precision without a single shot being fired,” the navy said in a statement. Videos shared by Mexico’s security minister, Omar García Harfuch, on social media showed aerial foo