As Mexican Marines closed in on infamous drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero deep in the mountains of his home state of Sinaloa, it was a 6-year-old bloodhound named “Max” who pulled the alleged killer out of the brush. of a DEA agent more than three decades ago.
While the motivation of the United States to find Caro Quintero was never in doubt—it offered a $20 million reward for information leading to her capture—there was less certainty about the commitment of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who made it clear his lack of interest in prosecuting the capo.
Yet on Friday, three days after López Obrador and President Joe Biden met at the White House, the DEA’s most wanted target was in Mexican custody.
Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office said in a statement Friday night that Caro Quintero was arrested for extradition to the United States and would be held in the maximum-security Altiplano prison, some 80 kilometers (50 miles) west of Mexico. west of Mexico City.
In a message to the agency on Friday night, DEA Administrator Anne Milgram celebrated Caro Quintero’s capture, noting that “it is the result of years of blood, sweat and tears.”
“It seems to me that in the talks of the private conversations between President Joe Biden and Andrés Manuel, they again agreed to hand over high-profile drug traffickers, which had been suspended,” said security analyst David Saucedo.
The cooperation between the DEA and the Mexican Navy achieved important captures in previous administrations, but not with the López Obrador government, Saucedo said.
Both presidents face domestic pressure to do more against drug lords. With the arrest of Caro Quintero, “there is already the capture of drug traffickers and I think that was what was needed, in fact,” said Saucedo.
However, the arrest came at a high cost. Fourteen Marines were killed and one was injured when a Secretary of the Navy Blackhawk helicopter crashed during the operation. The secretariat said in a statement that it appeared to have been an accident and that they are investigating the cause.
Samuel González, who founded the organized crime office at Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office and is now a security analyst, said the capture might not have a major effect on the map of organized crime in Mexico, since Caro Quintero was not as powerful as it was decades ago, and could even generate more violence in territories like Sonora, on the border with the United States.
But he stressed that for the benefit of López Obrador, the arrest is evidence that in his administration “there is no protection from the bosses.”
González believes that Caro Quintero has been a thorn in the bilateral relationship for a long time, but said that “without a doubt” his capture was the result of recent negotiations in Washington.
The Americans never stopped pressing for his arrest, Gonzalez said.
The Secretary of Justice of the United States, Merrick Garland, and the US Ambassador to Mexico, Ken Salazar, welcomed Mexico’s efforts to catch the man accused of the brutal torture and murder of the agent of the US anti-drug agency DEA, Enrique “Kiki”. Camarena, in 1985, a case that strained relations between the two countries.
“This achievement is a testament to Mexico’s determination to bring to justice someone who terrorized and destabilized Mexico during his time in the Guadalajara Cartel; and he is implicated in the kidnapping, torture, and murder of DEA agent Kiki Camarena,” Salazar said in a statement Friday night.
Garland said the US government would seek his immediate extradition.
“My hope is that with the capture of Caro Quintero, a lot of tensions between the DEA and Mexico will be fixed,” said Mike Vigil, a former head of international operations for the anti-drug agency.
The Mexican Navy and the Attorney General’s Office conducted the operation deep in the mountains that straddle the border between the states of Sinaloa and Chihuahua, many miles from any paved road. They found him with the help of a trained bloodhound named “Max”, hidden in the undergrowth in a place in Sinaloa called San Simón.
López Obrador said the helicopter that crashed in the coastal city of Los Mochis was providing support in the manhunt for Caro Quintero. US officials expressed their condolences for the Marines who died.
Caro Quintero is originally from Badiraguato, Sinaloa, just like Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, who arrived later. Caro Quintero was one of the founders of the Guadalajara Cartel and, according to the DEA, was one of the main suppliers of heroin, cocaine and marijuana to the United States in the 1970s and 1980s.
Caro Quintero blamed Camarena for a raid on a huge marijuana plantation in 1984. The following year, Camarena was kidnapped in Guadalajara, allegedly on Caro Quintero’s orders. His tortured body was found a month later.
Caro Quintero was first captured in Costa Rica in 1985 and was serving a 40-year sentence in Mexico when an appeals court overturned his verdict in 2013. The Mexican Supreme Court upheld the prison sentence, but it was too late : Caro Quintero had already fled.
The FBI added Caro Quintero to its 2018 Top 10 Most Wanted list with a $20 million reward for her capture.
Previously, López Obrador had been ambivalent about the case.
Last year, the president said the appeal that led to Caro Quintero’s release was “justified” because the drug lord had allegedly not been sentenced after 27 years in prison. López Obrador also described the new arrest warrant as an example of US pressure.
“Once he leaves, to look for him again because the United States demands that he should not have been released, but the protection proceeded legally,” said López Obrador.
Presidential spokesman Jesús Ramírez said at the time that the president “only pointed out that it is a legal aberration that the judge has not sentenced Mr. Caro Quintero 27 years later… but he did not defend his release.”
While Caro Quintero was on the run, Mexican reporter Anabel Hernández interviewed him twice in the mountains of northern Mexico without revealing the location. Caro Quintero assured in those interviews that he was no longer involved in drug trafficking.
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