Infamous drug boss caught
The Canadian Press – July 15, 2022 / 14:15 | History: 375944
Photo: contributed
Renowned drug trafficker Rafael Caro Quintero, who was behind the assassination of a U.S. DEA agent in 1985, has been captured by Mexican forces nearly a decade after leaving a Mexican prison and returning to drug trafficking, confirmed on Friday an official of the Mexican navy.
The source was not allowed to speak publicly and agreed to confirm the action only if it was not cited by name. No more details about the capture were immediately available.
Caro Quintero was released in 2013 after 28 years in prison when a court overturned his 40-year sentence for the 1985 kidnapping and murder of a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent. Enrique “Kiki” Camarena. The brutal assassination marked a low point in US-Mexico relations.
Caro Quintero, the former leader of the Guadalajara cartel, had since returned to drug trafficking and had sparked bloody battles in the border state of Sonora, in northern Mexico.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has maintained that he is not interested in detaining drug lords and prefers to avoid violence.
An appeals court overturned Caro Quintero’s sentence, but the Supreme Court upheld the sentence. By then it was too late; Caro Quintero was discouraged in a vehicle waiting for him.
He was on the FBI’s most wanted list, with a $ 20 million reward for his capture through the State Department’s Narcotics Rewards Program. He was added to the FBI’s top 10 most wanted list in 2018.
Caro Quintero was one of the leading suppliers of heroin, cocaine and marijuana in the United States in the late 1970s. He blamed Camarena for a raid on a marijuana plantation in 1984. In 1985, Camarena was kidnapped in Guadalajara, supposedly by orders of Caro Quintero. His tortured body was found a month later.