TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — President Ricardo Maduro said Monday that police have arrested the alleged mastermind of an attack on a public bus that left 28 passengers dead two weeks ago.

The suspect was identified as Juan Carlos Miralda, 24, one of the leaders of the violent Mara Salvatrucha criminal gang, which police have blamed from the beginning for the slayings on Dec. 23 outside the northern city of San Pedro Sula, about 125 miles north of the capital, Tegucigalpa.

"He is in the authorities' hands and will be put at the mercy of the courts so that he rots in jail," Maduro said in interviews with radio stations HRN and Radio America.

Ten other gang members have been arrested in connection with the bus killings. All have been charged with homicide.

The massacre took place on a bus filled with workers returning home and shoppers buying gifts for Christmas. A car carrying two armed men cut off the bus, after which one of the men got of the car and started shooting. He then climbed aboard the bus where he continued to fire, while two other men fired from behind the bus. The majority of the 56 passengers aboard the bus were women and children.

In a message left on the bus's windshield, the gunmen claimed they were part of a previously unknown revolutionary group opposed to the death penalty, one of the main campaign issues in next year's presidential campaign. Executions were stopped in the 1950s.

The Mara Salvatrucha and rival Mara 18 gangs, comprising about 100,000 members all together, control poor neighborhoods in Honduras' principal cities using violence, threats and extortion.