The extradition of drug trafficker Rafael Caro Quintero, captured in the mountains of northwestern Mexico, will not be quick, according to the decision of a local judge.
The judge issued the equivalent of an injunction preventing Caro Quintero from being sent to the United States. He also ordered that he should remain in the maximum security prison west of the Mexican capital, where he was transferred after his capture.
After Caro Quintero’s arrest last Friday, the US government said it would seek his “immediate extradition.” That process began on Saturday, but as expected, Caro Quintero’s lawyers intervened.
The extradition process can often be lengthened depending on the target’s willingness to fight it and the governments’ desire to expedite it.
In the case of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the former leader of the Sinaloa cartel who is now serving a life sentence in the United States, the process took a year.
Caro Quintero, convicted of the 1985 murder of DEA agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena and a Mexican pilot, was captured by Mexican marines on Friday in Sinaloa state.
On Monday, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said the arrest showed the Mexican government fails to protect criminals. “If there is an arrest warrant, it has to be executed and if support is requested from the government [de México] runs, whoever it is, it’s a matter of course, they [las fuerzas armadas] they do not need to consult me,” López Obrador said.
When asked if the DEA had located Caro Quintero and told the Mexican Navy where to find him, López Obrador said “no.” He said that the Mexicans themselves had developed intelligence on where the 69-year-old drug trafficker was hiding and acted accordingly.
The president said that there is regular cooperation between the two countries and the US authorities participate “when necessary”, for example with drones, but clarified that this was not the case this time.
Few details of the capture have been made public. The drug trafficker was captured three days after López Obrador met with President Joe Biden in Washington. And DEA Administrator Anne Milgram made it sound like a collaborative effort in a message to the agency Friday night. “Our incredible DEA team in Mexico worked in conjunction with Mexican authorities to capture and arrest Rafael Caro Quintero,” she said in a message to the agency on Friday night. “Today’s arrest is the result of years of blood, sweat and tears.”
Caro Quintero was captured in Costa Rica in 1985. He was serving a 40-year sentence in Mexico for the kidnapping and murder of DEA agent Enrique Camarena and Mexican pilot Alfredo Zavala Avelar, but an appeals court reversed his verdict in 2013.
Caro Quintero was added to the list of the 10 most wanted criminals by the FBI in 2018 with a reward of 20 million dollars for his capture.
Associated Press/OnCuba.
