MEXICO CITY, July 15 (Reuters) – Mexico’s navy on Friday captured drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero, convicted of killing a U.S. anti-narcotics agent in 1985, in a law enforcement coup that came at a high price when a helicopter used in the mission crashed, killing 14 military personnel.
Marines rescued Caro Quintero by hound in a remote corner of northwestern Sinaloa state, one of Mexico’s drug-trafficking hubs, before the Black Hawk helicopter went down as it was about to land further south.
Caro Quintero rose to prominence as the co-founder of the Guadalajara Cartel, one of Latin America’s most powerful drug-trafficking organizations in the 1980s, and was among the most prized targets for US officials.
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The US government welcomed the arrest and said it would waste no time seeking his extradition.
“This is huge,” White House senior Latin America adviser Juan Gonzalez said on Twitter.
Caro Quintero was captured in San Simón in the Sinaloa municipality of Choix after the military-trained female hound named Max found him in the bushes, the navy said.
The arrest comes after pressure from the United States, according to a Mexican official, and the same week that President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador met with US President Joe Biden in Washington.
Lopez Obrador said on Twitter that the navy would investigate what caused the helicopter crash in the city of Los Mochis, Sinaloa, which killed 14 and seriously injured one. He said he was carrying military personnel who supported the team that arrested the kingpin.
Caro Quintero spent 28 years in prison for the brutal murder and torture of former US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena, one of the most notorious killings in Mexico’s bloody drug wars. The events dramatized in the 2018 Netflix series Narcos: Mexico led to a decline in US-Mexico cooperation in a five-decade long “war on drugs.”
Caro Quintero had previously denied involvement in Camarena’s murder. He was released in 2013 on a technicality by a Mexican judge, embarrassing the previous government.
He quickly went underground and returned to trafficking as part of the Sinaloa cartel, according to U.S. officials, who put him on the FBI’s 10 most wanted fugitives list and put a $20 million bounty on his head, a record for a drug trafficker.
Last year, he lost a final appeal against extradition to the United States. He will be extradited as quickly as possible, another Mexican official said.
“This is probably one of the most important seizures of the last decade in terms of significance for the DEA,” said Mike Vigil, the DEA’s former chief of international operations.
US Attorney General Merrick Garland said he would seek the immediate extradition of Caro Quintero.
“There is no hiding place for anyone who kidnaps, tortures and kills American law enforcement officers. We are deeply grateful to the Mexican authorities for the capture and arrest of Rafael Caro-Quintero,” Garland said in a statement.
Prior to extradition, Caro Quintero will be held at the Altiplano prison in Mexico state, Mexican prosecutors said. The prison is known as the one from which his old Sinaloa cartel associate Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman escaped in 2015.
Although Caro Quintero, 69, is no longer considered a major player in international drug trafficking, the symbolic impact of his capture is significant.
The arrest shows significant cooperation between the United States and Mexico despite recent security clashes, Mexican security expert Alejandro Hope said. “This type of capture is unthinkable without the involvement of the DEA,” he said.
Mexico’s reluctance to extradite Caro Quintero to the United States before his release from prison has been a source of tension between the two countries. A US official said Washington was very anxious for him to be extradited.
“Hopefully this will begin to mend the deteriorating relationship between the United States and Mexico in terms of combating drug trafficking,” said former DEA official Vigil.
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Reporting by Lizbeth Diaz, Dražen Jorgić, Dave Graham and Jackie Botts; Additional reporting by Diego Ore; Written by Dražen Jorgić and Brendan O’Boyle; Editing by Stephen Eisenhammer, Rosalba O’Brien, and William Mallard
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