#Mexico #arrests #drug #fugitive #FBIs #Wanted #List
Mexico has arrested a suspected drug lord on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list for the murder of a US federal agent, a Navy source said on Friday.
Rafael Caro Quintero, 69, is accused by the United States of ordering the 1985 kidnapping, torture and murder of Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) special agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena.
He was arrested that year, tried in Mexico and sentenced to 40 years in prison for the murder of Camarena.
In 2013, a Mexican court ordered Caro Quintero’s release on judicial grounds after serving 28 years.
The decision was overturned by Mexico’s Supreme Court, but Caro Quintero had already gone into hiding.
The case plunged US-Mexico relations into a crisis, and it took decades to rebuild trust in anti-drug agencies on either side of the border.
Caro Quintero aka “Rafa” has a $20 million bounty on his head and is being described as “extremely dangerous” by the FBI.
According to the DEA, he is accused of co-founding the now-defunct Guadalajara drug cartel and currently runs an arm of the notorious Sinaloa cartel.
According to Mexican media, he was captured by the Navy in the northern state of Chihuahua.
– deny guilt –
In 2016, in an interview published by news magazine Proceso, Caro Quintero denied killing Camarena, whose story was portrayed in the Netflix show Narcos: Mexico.
“I didn’t kidnap him, I didn’t torture him and I didn’t kill him,” said Caro Quintero, adding that he wanted to “live in peace” and work as a rancher.
“I apologize to Mexican society for the mistakes I made, to the Camarena family, to the DEA, to the US government. I apologize,” he added.
Camarena’s murder was seen as a vendetta for a DEA agent’s investigation, which led to the seizure of a vast marijuana field in Chihuahua.
Last year, a Mexican court ruled that Caro Quintero could be extradited to the United States if caught, rejecting an appeal by his lawyers who argued he had already been charged in a Mexican court.
The Guadalajara drug cartel, which was powerful in the 1980s, is considered the forefather of the modern Mexican drug cartels.
She was one of the first to establish contacts with Colombian drug lords to transport cocaine from the South American country to the United States.
His disappearance led to the rise of the powerful Sinaloa drug cartel led by Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.
In 2017, Mexico extradited Guzman to the United States, where he is serving a life sentence.
A spate of cartel-related violence has killed more than 340,000 people in Mexico since the government deployed the military in the 2006 war on drugs.
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