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MEXICO CITY – Mexican Marines on Friday captured fugitive drug trafficker Rafael Caro Quintero, a leading U.S. law enforcement officer who was convicted of the 1985 assassination of a DEA agent, an event which transformed the U.S. government’s war on drug traffickers, according to Mexican authorities. .
Caro Quintero, 69, is considered one of the perpetrators of the kidnapping, torture and murder of DEA agent Enrique Camarena in Mexico. The co-founder of the Guadalajara Cartel had served a 28-year sentence of 40 years in prison for that murder and other crimes when he was suddenly released before the dawn of August 9, 2013, by order of a judge who invoked reasons administrative.
Since then, the recovery of Caro Quintero has been an obsession for the DEA and a top priority for successive US administrations. In 2020, then-Attorney General William P. Barr urged the Mexican government to locate the drug chief in a reciprocal gesture, as the Trump administration dropped drug trafficking charges against former Defense Minister Salvador Cienfuegos and Zepeda sent him back to Mexico, according to several officials. . But Caro Quintero repeatedly escaped as officers locked themselves in.
“There are hundreds of them [DEA] agents who went to Mexico to defend that country’s national security, but also to bring RCQ to justice, ”said Terry Cole, a retired DEA agent who served in Mexico.
After Caro Quintero was released in 2013, Mexico issued a new arrest warrant against him. Now, the U.S. government is requesting the extradition of the cocaine trafficker to federal court in New York.
U.S. authorities had offered a $ 20 million reward for information leading to the arrest of Caro Quintero, and he was on the FBI and DEA lists of the most wanted fugitives. His arrest on Friday came days after President Andrés Manuel López Obrador met with President Biden at the White House. Recently, Mexico has drastically intensified its efforts against drugs, especially against producers of the deadly opioid fentanyl.
Mexican Navy special forces, with the help of U.S. intelligence, captured the drug trafficker near Choix, in the state of Sinaloa, according to two former U.S. officials who knew the details. One, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the operational details, said Caro Quintero had traveled with a small group of bodyguards and was in a wooded area.
Hours after the capture, a Mexican navy helicopter crashed near Los Mochis, Sinaloa, in an apparent crash, killing several Marines, according to Mexican and U.S. officials. The newspaper Reforma, citing unidentified Navy sources, reported that the Marines had aided in the hunting of Caro Quintero.
The arrest of the trafficker was long sought by the DEA, but could also send a powerful message to members of Mexico’s criminal underworld, said Manelich Castilla, the former head of the Mexican federal police.
“These living symbols represent a great deal to deal with criminals,” he told Milenio TV.
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Camarena, a U.S. Navy and police officer before joining the DEA, was abducted on February 7, 1985 in Guadalajara, a major drug trafficking center, impacted the U.S. government and caused a massive manhunt. U.S. customs agents stifled traffic on the border with Mexico to press for action on the case. The DEA angrily alleged that corrupt Mexican police helped Caro Quintero secretly leave the country.
A month after the kidnapping, the bodies of the U.S. drug agent and his pilot were found in shallow pits in the state of Michoacan. The murders were attributed to Caro Quintero, a major marijuana producer, and two other drug lords: Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo and Ernesto “Don Neto” Fonseca. Caro Quintero was later captured in Costa Rica and extradited to Mexico. The three men were convicted of the murders.
Camarena’s assassination had far-reaching consequences: it led to the dissolution of Mexico’s federal police, plagued by corruption, and an expanded role for the DEA. “His sacrifice strengthened the department’s budget, its staff, and its political position,” Benjamin T. Smith wrote in “The Dope,” a history of Mexican drug trafficking. “In the late 1980s, it led the growing attention of the United States in the fight against international narcotics.”
Camarena’s murder and homicide investigation were narrated on the Netflix series “Narcos Mexico.”
Cooperation between the United States and Mexico deteriorated after López Obrador, a long-time leftist, took office in 2018 promising to end the “war on drugs” and keep young people out of trafficking with social programs. He was a staunch critic of the captain strategy used by his predecessors to persecute drug cartel leaders.
Relations deteriorated further in 2020, when U.S. officials acting at the request of the DEA arrested Cienfuegos at Los Angeles airport and accused the former Defense Minister of drug trafficking. Mexico retaliated by limiting the ability of DEA agents to work in the country.
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Lately, however, there has been a sharp increase in Mexican busts of fentanyl and methamphetamine labs. This week, at a meeting in Washington, Biden and Lopez Obrador agreed to set up a working group on fentanyl. Synthetic drugs have become a growing crisis in the United States, where more than 100,000 people suffered an overdose last year, largely due to increased fentanyl use.
It was unclear whether the timing of Caro Quintero’s arrest was related to the White House meeting.
Caro Quintero was once nicknamed the “Godfather” of Mexican drug trafficking. The Sinaloa native was a co-founder of the Guadalajara Cartel, a network of allies that dominated drug shipments to the United States in the 1980s and was one of the first to team up with major Colombian cocaine traffickers.
Since his release in 2013, Caro Quintero has kept a low profile, but is believed to have close ties to Sinaloa cartel leaders. He is believed to have been operating in the Caborca area of Sinaloa, and is rumored to be in poor health.