Mexico captures infamous drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero

There experienced been tensions concerning the Mexican governing administration and the DEA immediately after Mexico enacted a regulation restricting the US agency’s functions. But just lately, the DEA’s new head in Mexico received a visa, which the US officers marked as a signal of development in the relationship.

Shortly before Caro Quintero’s arrest Friday, US Ambassador Ken Salazar informed a gathering of reporters there experienced been development in the security partnership.

“I have been in meetings with the foreign minister and with the security cabinet, along with all our businesses that have provided the new head of the DEA sitting down at my proper hand,” Salazar mentioned. “So if we weren’t welcome below in Mexico that wouldn’t transpire.”

An appeals court docket overturned Caro Quintero’s verdict in 2013, but the Supreme Court docket upheld the sentence. It was far too late by then Caro Quintero was spirited off in a ready automobile.

He was on the FBI’s most wished list, with a $US20 million reward for his seize through the Point out Department’s Narcotics Benefits Program. He was additional to the FBI’s leading 10 most required record in 2018.

Caro Quintero was just one of the major suppliers of heroin, cocaine, and cannabis to the United States in the late 1970s. He blamed Camarena for a raid on a cannabis plantation in 1984. In 1985, Camarena was kidnapped in Guadalajara, allegedly on orders from Caro Quintero. His tortured body was located a month afterwards.

Late Friday, US Legal professional Normal Merrick Garland expressed the US government’s deep gratitude to Mexican authorities for Caro Quintero’s arrest and supplied condolences for the Mexican armed service personnel who died in the helicopter crash.

“There is no hiding place for anyone who kidnaps, tortures, and murders American regulation enforcement,” he claimed in a assertion. “Today’s arrest is the culmination of tireless function by DEA and their Mexican companions to bring Caro-Quintero to justice for his alleged crimes, together with the torture and execution of DEA Particular Agent Enrique ‘Kiki’ Camarena. We will be in search of his quick extradition to the United States so he can be tried using for these crimes in the very justice system Unique Agent Camarena died defending.”

Mike Vigil, the DEA’s former main of global functions, said Caro Quintero was considered to have been functioning independently most recently, even though there had been rumours he was back with the Sinaloa cartel.

Caro Quintero was from Badiraguato, Sinaloa, the very same place as Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, the previous Sinaloa cartel chief now serving a lifestyle sentence in the United States. He inevitably grew to become one of the “godfathers” of Mexican drug trafficking.

Vigil stated he was astonished by Caro Quintero’s arrest, thinking about López Obrador’s said disinterest in likely just after drug cartel leaders, but he additional that the DEA would never ever cease looking for an individual who killed an agent.

“We didn’t see a good deal of work (to seize Caro Quintero) in the very last a number of decades, particularly when (López Obrador) came in and quickly started to dismantle a large amount of the infrastructure and the bilateral interactions in between the US and Mexico relative to drug trafficking,” Vigil claimed.

Following looking at Caro Quintero walk out of a Mexican jail as soon as previously, Vigil mentioned he hopes the federal government won’t threat a repeat — Guzman 2 times escaped from Mexican maximum safety prisons — and would agree to a probably US extradition request.

In Sonora, a single of the state’s hit toughest by Caro Quintero’s efforts to reclaim his territory, there was a hope his arrest could help.

“I feel in Sonora, in common, there could be relaxed, and indeed, aid for us, for the reason that I think the disappearances will diminish,” explained Cecilia Duarte, an activist with a workforce of volunteer searchers in Sonora who glimpse for the clandestine graves of the disappeared. Some activists have been threatened and even killed in Sonora amid Caro Quintero’s turf wars with the sons of “El Chapo.”

But, Duarte stated, Caro Quintero “is only component (of the conflict), the conflict doesn’t stop.”

AP