One of Washington’s most wanted drug traffickers has been arrested
Drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero, who was arrested in Mexico on Friday, was on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted Fugitives list.
A Mexican drug trafficker, one of the US’s ten most wanted men, was arrested in Mexico on Friday, the Navy Ministry told AFP. Rafael Caro Quintero was arrested by naval agents in the northern state of Chihuahua, Mexican media reported. A Navy Ministry source confirmed the arrest to AFP, declining to give any details.
Rafael Caro Quintero, 69, was on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted Fugitives list for the 1985 kidnapping, torture and murder of US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) agent Kiki Camarena in Mexico, the FBI said. Washington offered 20 million dollars (about 19.5 million francs) to capture him.
The Mexican was one of the founding members of Guadalajara’s (southern) first major drug cartels in the late 1970s. “He maintains a position of influence in the Sinaloa cartel and the Caro-Quintero drug trafficking organization.” According to the FBI.
Released in 2013
First arrested in 1985, he was tried in Mexico and sentenced to 40 years in prison. A judge acquitted him in 2013 in a legal dispute. The Mexican judge asked him to recapture shortly after. The United States sought the extradition of Mexican-born American agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena for kidnapping, murder, and drug trafficking.
“I didn’t kidnap him, I didn’t torture him, I didn’t kill him,” he defended himself in an interview with the weekly “Proceso” in July 2016. “I was at the crime scene. My only participation.
Rafael Caro Quintero is one of the main characters in the series “Narcos Mexico”, which details the creation of the Guadalajara Cartel, the DEA’s covert war in Mexico, the arrest, torture and murder of Agent Camerana. Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, the leader of the Guadalajara cartel, has been in prison since 1989 for the assassination of Kiki Camarena. He denies his involvement.
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