“Chano” Millan Vasquez, 34, a regional boss of the Mexican Zetas cartel received seven life sentences for his involvement in 29 deaths which he carried out for the Zetas cartel, a drug gang which operates in northern Mexico.
Millan was operating as a regional boss for the ruthless cartel, which is believed to have systematically slaughtered at least 300 people between 2009 and 2015.
One of his victims was a six-year-old girl he dismembered on the patio of her family home in order to “teach her father a lesson”.
At his trial a witness testified that Millan laughed as he forced the child’s parents and other hostages to watch while he hacked off her arms and legs with an axe while she was still alive before setting fire to them in a barrel.
He then ordered the parents and 15 others be killed in the same brutal fashion.
“The level of violence … is something that is rarely seen in the courtroom and … rarely seen even in fiction,” Assistant US Attorney Russ Leachman told the judge.
Not only were victims chopped up, but their bodies were dissolved with acid or burned in barrels until little was left. The murders and disposal of the bodies were “horrific,” Mr Leachman said.

Zetas head Omar Trevino Morales was apprehended by Mexican authorities in March 2015. He gave the orders for the ‘Allende Massacre’

Zetas soldiers operated with impunity in the region

The murders were all carried out in Mexico but because Millan was working and living in San Antonio at the time of his arrest, he was prosecuted in a Texas court and will serve out his sentence in a US jail.
At his trial last year the court heard how Millan began as a foot soldier for the Zetas, the former paramilitary enforcement arm of the Gulf Cartel, before being promoted to boss of the Piedras Negras plaza, an important smuggling corridor across the border from Eagle Pass.
Millan was placed at the scenes of a mass roundup in March 2011 ordered by then-leader Miguel “Cuarenta” Treviño Morales of more than 300 people in towns south or near Piedras Negras.
The cartel ransacked the towns, bombing homes, offices and government buildings, killing men, women and children in a murderous frenzy after Treviño and other leaders discovered one of their own had turned US informant. The cartel burned their bodies in barrels of acid or with diesel fuel, the court heard.
The grim affair, known as the “Allende massacre,” left many searching for the whereabouts of their loved ones for years.

Judge Rodriguez added on another five years for lying to federal agents and slapped him with a $1million fine.
Asked if he wished to say anything, Millan told the judge: “No. Está bien (No. It’s all right).”
Millan was arrested in July 2015 while living under an assumed name in a modest house at 315 Jesse Avenue on San Antonio’s West Side, where he had settled with some relatives.
He was tried in 2016 and convicted on all 10 charges he faced, including killing in furtherance of drug-trafficking crimes.
US law allowed the federal government to prosecute him for killings in another country as long as those violent acts were part of a drug conspiracy with connections to the US.