MEXICO CITY (AP) — Infamous drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero, who was behind the 1985 killing of a U.S. DEA agent, was captured Friday by Mexican forces nearly a decade after breaking out of a Mexican prison and returning to drug trafficking. the mexican navy i said.
Caro Quintero was arrested after a sniffer dog named “Max” found him hiding in bushes in the town of San Simon in Sinaloa state during a joint operation between the Navy and the Attorney General’s Office, the Navy said in a statement. The site was in the mountains near Sinaloa’s border with the northern border state of Chihuahua.
Mexico’s National Arrest Registry listed the time of Caro Quintero’s arrest at around noon. There were two pending arrest warrants for him, as well as an extradition request from the US government.
Mexico’s attorney general’s office said in a statement late Friday that Caro Quintero has been arrested for extradition and will be held at the Altiplano maximum-security prison about 50 miles west of Mexico City.
A very brief video segment released by the Navy shows Caro Quintero – his face blurred – wearing jeans, a wet blue shirt and a baggy khaki jacket, held by both hands by men wearing camouflage uniforms and carrying assault rifles.
A Navy Blackhawk helicopter carrying 15 people crashed near the coastal town of Los Mochis during the operation, killing 14 of those on board, the Navy said in a statement. Available information indicates that he suffered an “accident”, the cause of which has not yet been determined, the statement said.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said via Twitter that the helicopter crashed shortly before landing after supporting those who carried out the capture of Caro Quintero. He offered condolences to the families of the victims and said the crash would be investigated.
Caro Quintero was freed in 2013 after 28 years in prison when a court overturned his 40-year sentence for the 1985 kidnapping and murder of US Drug Enforcement Administration agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena. The brutal killing marked a low point in US-Mexico relations.
Caro Quintero, the former leader of the Guadalajara cartel, has since returned to drug trafficking and unleashed bloody fighting in the northern Mexican border state of Sonora.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador says he is not interested in arresting drug lords and prefers to avoid violence.
But the arrest came just days after López Obrador met with US President Joe Biden at the White House.
There have been tensions between the Mexican government and the DEA after Mexico passed a law restricting the US agency’s operations. But the new head of the DEA in Mexico recently received a visa, which US officials hailed as a sign of progress in relations.
Shortly before Caro Quintero’s arrest on Friday, US Ambassador Ken Salazar told reporters that there had been progress in security relations.
“I’ve been in meetings with the secretary of state and the security cabinet, along with all of our agencies, including the new head of the DEA, who sits at my right hand,” Salazar said. “So if we weren’t welcome here in Mexico, this wouldn’t have happened.”
An appeals court overturned Caro Quintero’s conviction in 2013, but the Supreme Court upheld the conviction. By then it was too late; Caro Quintero was kidnapped in a waiting car.
He was on the FBI’s most wanted list with a $20 million reward for his capture through the State Department’s Drug Bounty Program. He was added to the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list in 2018.
Caro Quintero was one of the main suppliers of heroin, cocaine and marijuana to the United States in the late 1970s. He accused Camarena of raiding a marijuana plantation in 1984. In 1985, Camarena was kidnapped in Guadalajara, allegedly on the orders of Caro Quintero. His tortured body was discovered a month later.
Late Friday, US Attorney General Merrick Garland expressed the US government’s deep gratitude to Mexican authorities for the arrest of Caro Quintero and expressed condolences for the Mexican military personnel killed in the helicopter crash.
“There is no hiding place for anyone who kidnaps, tortures and kills American law enforcement officers,” he said in a statement. “Today’s arrest is the culmination of tireless work by the DEA and their Mexican partners to bring Caro-Quintero to justice for his alleged crimes, including the torture and execution of DEA Special Agent Enrique ‘Kiki’ Camarena.” We will seek his immediate extradition to the United States so he can be tried for these crimes in the very justice system that died protecting Special Agent Camarena.
Mike Vigil, the DEA’s former chief of international operations, said Caro Quintero was believed to have been operating independently of late, although there were rumors that he had returned to the Sinaloa cartel.
Caro Quintero was from Badiraguato, Sinaloa, the same area as Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, a former leader of the Sinaloa cartel who is now serving a life sentence in the United States. In the end, he became one of the “godfathers” of Mexican drug trafficking.
Vigil said he was surprised by Caro Quintero’s arrest, given Lopez Obrador’s stated disinterest in going after drug cartel leaders, but added that the DEA would never stop looking for someone who killed an agent.
“We haven’t seen much effort (to catch Caro Quintero) in the last few years, especially when (López Obrador) came in and immediately started dismantling a lot of the infrastructure and the bilateral relationship between the U.S. and Mexico’s drug-trafficking kin,” Vigil said .
In Sonora, one of the states hardest hit by Caro Quintero’s efforts to reclaim territory, there was hope that his arrest might help.
“I believe that in Sonora in general there can be peace and yes, relief for us because I believe that the disappearances will decrease,” said Cecilia Duarte, an activist with a team of volunteer searchers in Sonora looking for the secret graves of the disappeared. Some activists have been threatened and even killed in Sonora amid Caro Quintero’s wars with El Chapo’s sons.
But, Duarte said, Caro Quintero “is only part (of the conflict), the conflict is not over.”
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Associated Press writers Mark Stephenson and Maria Verza in Mexico City contributed to this report.
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