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Marines flushed out Caro Quintero with a bloodhound in a far-flung nook of the northwestern state of Sinaloa, one in every of Mexico’s drug-trafficking heartlands, earlier than the Black Hawk chopper got here down because it was about to land additional south.
Caro Quintero rose to prominence as a co-founder of the Guadalajara Cartel, one in every of Latin America’s strongest drug trafficking organizations throughout the Nineteen Eighties, and had been among the many most prized targets for U.S. officers.
The U.S. authorities hailed the arrest, and mentioned it might waste no time in requesting his extradition.
“That is enormous,” White Home senior Latin America adviser Juan Gonzalez mentioned on Twitter.
Caro Quintero was captured in San Simon within the Sinaloa municipality of Choix after the military-trained feminine bloodhound named Max discovered him in shrub land, the navy mentioned.
The arrest comes after strain from the USA, in line with a Mexican official, and the identical week that President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador met with U.S. President Joe Biden in Washington.
Lopez Obrador mentioned on Twitter the navy would examine what prompted the crash of the helicopter within the metropolis of Los Mochis, Sinaloa, that killed 14 and left one significantly injured. He mentioned it had been carrying navy personnel who had been backing up the group that arrested the kingpin.
Caro Quintero spent 28 years in jail for the brutal homicide and torture of former U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena, one of the vital infamous killings in Mexico’s bloody narco wars. The occasions, dramatized within the 2018 Netflix sequence “Narcos: Mexico,” led to a nadir in U.S.-Mexico co-operation in a five-decade “warfare on medication.”
Caro Quintero has beforehand denied involvement within the killing of Camarena. He was launched in 2013 on a technicality by a Mexican decide, embarrassing the earlier authorities.
He shortly went underground and returned to trafficking as a part of the Sinaloa Cartel, in line with U.S. officers, who put him on the FBI’s High 10 most wished fugitives record and put a $20 million bounty on his head, a document for a drug trafficker.
Final 12 months, he misplaced a remaining attraction towards extradition to the USA. He can be extradited as shortly as potential, one other Mexican official mentioned.
“It’s in all probability one of the vital essential captures of the final decade when it comes to significance to the DEA,” mentioned Mike Vigil, the DEA’s former chief of worldwide operations.
U.S. Legal professional Basic Merrick Garland mentioned he would search Caro Quintero’s fast extradition.
“There isn’t a hiding place for anybody who kidnaps, tortures, and murders American legislation enforcement. We’re deeply grateful to Mexican authorities for his or her seize and arrest of Rafael Caro-Quintero,” Garland mentioned in an announcement.
Earlier than extradition, Caro Quintero can be held in Altiplano jail within the state of Mexico, Mexican prosecutors mentioned. The penitentiary is infamous because the one from which his outdated Sinaloa Cartel affiliate Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman escaped in 2015.
Whereas the 69-year-old Caro Quintero is now not thought-about a significant participant in worldwide drug trafficking, the symbolic impression of his seize is important.
The arrest factors to important cooperation between the USA and Mexico regardless of latest clashes over safety, mentioned Mexican safety knowledgeable Alejandro Hope. “This kind of seize is unthinkable with out the participation of the DEA,” he mentioned.
Mexico’s unwillingness to extradite Caro Quintero to the USA earlier than his launch from jail had been a supply of stress between the 2 nations. A U.S. official mentioned Washington was very desperate to have him extradited.
“It will hopefully begin to mend the frayed relationship between the USA and Mexico when it comes to combating drug trafficking,” mentioned former DEA official Vigil.
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