Dealer accuses cartel suspect

By JEREMY ROEBUCK/The Monitor

McALLEN — A North Carolina drug dealer testified Friday that Carlos Landín-Martinez oversaw the torture and execution of a man who refused to cooperate with the Gulf Cartel.

The killing, Arturo Alonzo Sequera said, was intended as a threat to ensure his own silence and future employment with the Tamaulipas-based drug trafficking organization.

“Carlos told me, ‘You don’t want to work with us?”” he said. “‘We’ll show you what happens to people who don’t obey us.’”

Sequera’s testimony came in the fifth day of the government’s case against Landín-Martinez, a 52-year-old former Tamaulipas police commander who prosecutors say was once believed to be second-in-command of the Gulf Cartel’s Reynosa operations.