Caro Quintero was previously jailed for the murder of a US anti-drugs agent, and was on the FBI’s 10 ‘Most Wanted’ list.
Mexico’s Navy has announced the capture of notorious drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero, convicted for the murder and torture of a US anti-narcotics agent in 1985, in a major win for law enforcement in the two countries.
The kingpin rose to prominence as a co-founder of the Guadalajara Cartel, one of Latin America’s most powerful drug trafficking organisations during the 1980s, and had been among the most prized targets for US officials.
The US government hailed the arrest, and said it would waste no time in requesting his extradition. “This is huge,” White House senior Latin America adviser Juan Gonzalez said on Twitter.
The Mexican Navy said in a statement Caro Quintero was caught in the municipality of Choix in the northwestern state of Sinaloa, one of Mexico’s drug-trafficking heartlands.
He was found in shrub land by a military-trained female bloodhound named Max, the Navy said.
The arrest in San Simon, Choix, comes after pressure from the United States, according to a Mexican official, and the same week that President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador met US President Joe Biden in Washington.
Caro Quintero spent 28 years in prison for the brutal murder of former US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent Enrique ‘Kiki’ Camarena, one of the most notorious killings in Mexico’s bloody narco wars. The events, dramatised in the 2018 Netflix series Narcos: Mexico, led to a nadir in US-Mexico cooperation in a five-decade “war on drugs.”
Caro Quintero has previously denied involvement in the killing of Camarena. 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 US officials, who put him on the FBI’s Top 10 most wanted fugitives list and placed a $20 million reward 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.
“It is probably one of the most important captures of the last decade in terms of importance to the DEA,” said Mike Vigil, the DEA’s former chief of international operations.
US Attorney General Merrick Garland said he would seek Caro Quintero’s immediate extradition.
“There is no hiding place for anyone who kidnaps, tortures, and murders American law enforcement. We are deeply grateful to Mexican authorities for their capture and arrest of Rafael Caro-Quintero,” Garland said in a statement.
While 69-year-old Caro Quintero is no longer considered a key player in international drug trafficking, the symbolic impact of his capture is significant.
For Mexican security expert Alejandro Hope, the arrest pointed to significant cooperation between the United States and Mexico despite recent clashes over security. “This type of capture is unthinkable without the participation of the DEA,” he said.
Mexico’s unwillingness to extradite Caro Quintero to the United States before his release from prison had been a source of tension between the two countries. A US official said Washington was very eager to have him extradited.
“This will hopefully start to mend the frayed relationship between the United States and Mexico in terms of combating drug trafficking,” said former DEA official Vigil.
In its statement, the Navy said 14 of its personnel had died after a Black Hawk helicopter crashed in the city of Los Mochis, Sinaloa, on Friday. The cause of the crash is under investigation, but so far there was no information indicating the incident was related to the capo’s arrest, the Navy said.
