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Rafael Caro Quintero, founder of the Guadalajara Cartel, and one of the ten most wanted fugitives by the FBI, was arrested by the Mexican Navy in the state of Sinaloa. Quintero was wanted for his alleged participation in the kidnapping and murder of a special agent of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in 1985, in Mexico. The United States was offering a $20 million reward for his capture, and will now seek his immediate extradition.
Rafael Caro Quintero was arrested in the town of Choix, in the state of Sinaloa, the Mexican Navy reported in a brief statement. The operation was carried out by the Attorney General’s Office in coordination with the Mexican Navy. The capo was arrested for “extradition purposes.”
Quintero was one of the FBI’s ten most wanted fugitives in the United States, and the reward for his capture amounted to 20 million dollars, the highest that the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) offered for a Mexican criminal. . According to the FBI, Quintero would have murdered a DEA special agent, Enrique “Kiki” Camarena, in the 1980s, a case that obsessed the US agency.
Caro Quintero, now 69 years old, was one of the main capos in the 1980s and one of the first to traffic drugs on a large scale to the United States.
From the North American nation, the Government announced this Friday that it will request the immediate extradition of the Mexican drug lord.
“We will request his immediate extradition to the United States so that he can be tried for his crimes in the same justice system that Special Agent Camarena died defending,” US Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.
“There is no hiding place for someone who kidnaps, tortures and murders an American law enforcement officer. We are deeply grateful to the Mexican authorities for their capture and detention of Rafael Caro Quintero,” added the attorney general.
Trajectory
Rafael Caro Quintero was born on October 3, 1952 in the state of Sinaloa. He said that his family was very poor, which forced him to grow marijuana after the death of his father.
In 1978, together with Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo and Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, he founded the first Mexican criminal organization dedicated exclusively to drug trafficking, the Guadalajara Cartel. It had the objective of transporting opium, marijuana, and later, cocaine to the United States. This allowed him to amass a large fortune, valued at 500 million dollars in the 1980s.
Caro Quintero is accused of having kidnapped and murdered DEA agent Enrique Camarena, as well as Mexican pilot Alfredo Zavala, in February 1985, in the state of Jalisco.
Camarena had managed to infiltrate his cartel and was flying over the drug fields with the pilot. The US agent allowed the dismantling of a gigantic marijuana plantation, which represented a severe economic blow to the organization.
After the events, Caro Quintero was arrested in Costa Rica and sentenced to 40 years in prison, which he was serving in a Mexican prison. However, after 28 years behind bars, the capo was released in August 2013 on a complicated legal technicality, something that the United States never forgave.
Quintero also defended himself against Camarena’s murder: “I didn’t kidnap him, I didn’t torture him, I didn’t kill him,” he said in a clandestine interview with the Mexican weekly ‘Proceso’ in July 2016, adding, “I was at the scene of the crime, that’s my only involvement.
At that time, the capo also said, “the only thing I’m looking for is peace and I apologize to Mexican society for the mistakes I made.”
According to the FBI, Rafael Caro Quintero continues to be a threat to drug trafficking, which could lead to his extradition.
With EFE and Reuters
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