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MEXICO CITY — A drug lord convicted of orchestrating the torture and murder of a Drug Enforcement Administration agent was arrested in northern Mexico on Friday, Mexican officials said, sparking a case that has long raised tensions with the United States Step closer brings to resolution.
Drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero was arrested in a joint operation by Mexico’s marines and the country’s prosecutors near the city of San Simón, in Sinaloa state, Mexican officials said.
Mr Caro Quintero was found hiding in the bushes by a search dog named Max, according to a statement by the Mexican Marines.
Two arrest warrants have been issued for Mr Caro Quintero, as well as an extradition request to the United States, officials said. The former crime boss has been charged with drug trafficking in federal court in Brooklyn since 2020, according to court documents.
Mr. Caro Quintero was found guilty of plotting the 1985 murder of DEA agent Enrique Camarena, known as Kiki, and was placed on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted List in 2018 after being released on legal paroles in 2013 had been. Since then he has been on the run.
In a move that surprised American authorities, Mr Caro Quintero had been serving 28 years of his 40-year sentence when he was abruptly released by a judge who ruled he had been wrongly convicted in federal court rather than state court the murder of Mr. Camarena.
The torture and murder of Mr. Camarena, who had been working undercover, was seen as a turning point in Mexico’s violent war on drug cartels and has long been a sore point for US law enforcement officials, as well as a source of friction with Washington.
The brutal murder of Mr. Camarena is considered one of the worst episodes in DEA history, and the capture of Mr. Caro Quintero has long been considered a pending matter within the agency.
The United States had requested Mr. Caro Quintero’s extradition at the time of his release. He had long maintained that he did not direct the assassination of Mr. Camarena.
The arrest of the notorious drug lord, who was a founder of the now-defunct Guadalajara cartel, came just days after Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador met President Biden in Washington.
In a joint statement after the meeting, both leaders said they “reaffirmed our commitment to work together to address important security issues affecting our nations, including the challenges of fentanyl, arms trafficking and human smuggling.”
Hours after Mr Caro Quintero was arrested, a Black Hawk helicopter crashed outside the nearby town of Los Mochis, killing 14 Marines on board; However, according to Mexican officials, there is still no evidence linking the two incidents.
The capture of Mr. Caro Quintero is likely to be seen as an important victory for Mr. López Obrador who, despite pledging to fight crime and quell violence, has presided over one of the bloodiest periods in Mexican history.
The arrest also indicates ongoing cooperation between the US and Mexican security forces, a relationship that has become increasingly strained since Mexico passed legislation last year restricting the activities of foreign agents and removing their diplomatic immunities.
The operation “requires a very fluid exchange of information between the Marines and American authorities,” said Alejandro Hope, a Mexico City-based security analyst. “It’s a sign that at least at this level, at the agency level, the collaboration is ongoing.”
But despite its symbolic importance, analysts warn that the practical implications of Mr Caro Quintero’s arrest will be limited as he was likely no longer a major figure in Mexico’s organized crime world, which has become increasingly fragmented and less concentrated in recent years cartel bosses.
“In terms of bilateral relations, especially to satisfy pressure from the DEA, that’s a big deal,” said Falko Ernst, senior analyst at the International Crisis Group. “But if you look at it from the perspective of what this means for armed conflicts on the ground and actually provides solutions to the violence, he was still an actor but not an important part.”
However, Mr. Caro Quintero remains a towering figure in Mexican drug history. Known as the “narco of narcos,” he pioneered the manufacture and trafficking of vast quantities of drugs into the United States.
According to his 2020 indictment, from at least 1980 Mr. Caro Quintero ran a massive trafficking network responsible for the manufacture and export of “multi-tonne quantities of heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana from Mexico to the United States.”
The organization was also responsible for transporting tons of cocaine from South America to the United States, according to the indictment, generating millions of dollars in profits that were then laundered back to Mexico.
The indictment also found that leaders of the Caro Quintero organization “employed ‘sicarios’ or hitmen who committed numerous violent acts, including murders, assaults, kidnappings and torture.”
By far the most notorious of these murders was the murder of Mr. Camarena in 1985.
The DEA agent was working undercover in Mexico when he was kidnapped in February of that year. Mr Caro Quintero had reportedly rioted against US agencies after Mr Camarena helped uncover a massive $160 million marijuana plantation.
Mr Camarena was brutally tortured before being murdered: a forensic expert said he was killed by being hit in the face and head with a blunt object. His mutilated body was found tied hand and foot and wrapped in plastic bags at a ranch near the city of Guadalajara nearly a month later.
The murder, the first such murder of a US agent on Mexican soil since the two countries began working together to fight cartels, sent shockwaves across both sides of the border and helped speed the war on drugs.
The killing inspired a “sense of revenge” and a desire to “disrupt the Mexican drug trade in a more personal and graphic way than ever before,” said Mr. Ernst, the analyst for the International Crisis Group. “It’s one of the key events” that helped “influence the entire strategy that was then formulated to pursue the leaders of these organizations.”
Mr. Camarena’s death has also become a touchstone in the cartel story, depicted in several television series, most recently the hit Netflix show Narcos: Mexico. The DEA, which named an office in San Diego after Mr. Camarena, also remembers it bitterly.
The Red Ribbon Week drug prevention campaign was also originally launched to commemorate the fallen agent.
Mr. Caro Quintero initially evaded capture and fled to Costa Rica, where he was later tracked down by US agents. Upon returning to Mexico, he was tried and convicted of plotting the assassination of Mr. Camarena in 1989.
But a judge overturned the conviction in 2013 and released Mr Caro Quintero, after which he apparently went straight back into the business.
According to his indictment, the cartel leader smuggled drugs into the United States on multiple occasions between 2015 and 2016, including thousands of kilograms of cocaine, as well as methamphetamine, marijuana and heroin in varying amounts.
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