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This body seize from video, offered by the Mexican authorities, reveals Ovidio Guzman Lopez being detained in Culiacan, Mexico, on Oct. 17, 2019.
CEPROPIE by way of AP File
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CEPROPIE by way of AP File
This body seize from video, offered by the Mexican authorities, reveals Ovidio Guzman Lopez being detained in Culiacan, Mexico, on Oct. 17, 2019.
CEPROPIE by way of AP File
MEXICO CITY — Mexico extradited Ovidio Guzmán López, a son of former Sinaloa cartel chief Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán, to the USA on Friday to face drug trafficking, cash laundering and different expenses, U.S. Lawyer Normal Merrick Garland stated in a press release.
“This motion is the latest step within the Justice Division’s effort to assault each side of the cartel’s operations,” Garland stated.
The Mexican authorities didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.
Mexican safety forces captured Guzmán López, alias “the Mouse,” in January in Culiacan, capital of Sinaloa state, the cartel’s namesake.
Three years earlier, the federal government had tried to seize him, however aborted the operation after his cartel allies set off a wave of violence in Culiacan.
January’s arrest set off related violence that killed 30 folks in Culiacan, together with 10 navy personnel. The military used Black Hawk helicopter gunships in opposition to the cartel’s truck-mounted .50-caliber machine weapons. Cartel gunmen hit two navy plane forcing them to land and despatched gunmen to the town’s airport the place navy and civilian plane have been hit by gunfire.
The seize got here simply days earlier than U.S. President Joe Biden visited Mexico for bilateral talks adopted by the North American Leaders’ Summit.
On Friday, Garland acknowledged the legislation enforcement and navy members who had given their lives within the U.S. and Mexico. “The Justice Division will proceed to carry accountable these answerable for fueling the opioid epidemic that has devastated too many communities throughout the nation.”
Mike Vigil, former head of worldwide operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration, stated he believed the Mexican authorities facilitated the extradition, as a result of for somebody of Guzmán López’s excessive profile it often takes at the very least two years to win extradition as attorneys make quite a few filings as a delaying tactic.
“This occurred faster than regular,” Vigil stated, noting that some conservative members of the U.S. Congress had raised the concept of U.S. navy intervention if Mexico didn’t do extra to cease the movement of medication. Vigil dismissed that concept as “political theater,” however recommended it added strain on Mexico to behave.
Homeland Safety Adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall stated in assertion that the extradition “is testomony to the importance of the continuing cooperation between the American and Mexican governments on countering narcotics and different important challenges, and we thank our Mexican counterparts for his or her partnership in working to safeguard our peoples from violent criminals.”
Sherwood-Randall made a number of visits to Mexico this 12 months to fulfill with President Andrés Manuel López-Obrador, most not too long ago final month.
In April, U.S. prosecutors unsealed sprawling indictments in opposition to Guzmán and his brothers, identified collectively because the “Chapitos.” They specified by element how following their father’s extradition and eventual life sentence within the U.S., the brothers steered the cartel more and more into artificial medicine like methamphetamine and the highly effective artificial opioid fentanyl.
The indictment unsealed in Manhattan stated their objective was to provide enormous portions of fentanyl and promote it on the lowest value. Fentanyl is so low cost to make that the cartel reaps immense income even wholesaling the drug at 50 cents per tablet, prosecutors stated. The brothers denied the allegations in a letter.
The Chapitos grew to become identified for grotesque violence that appeared to surpass any notions of restraint proven by earlier generations of cartel leaders.
Vigil described Guzmán López as a mid-level chief within the cartel and never even the chief of the brothers.
“It is a symbolic victory but it surely’s not going to have any influence in any way on the Sinaloa cartel,” he stated. “It would proceed to operate, it should proceed to ship medicine into the USA, particularly being the biggest producers of fentanyl.”
Fentanyl has turn out to be a prime precedence within the bilateral safety relationship. However López Obrador has described his nation as a transit level for precursors coming from China and certain for the U.S., regardless of assertions by the U.S. authorities and his personal navy about fentanyl manufacturing in Mexico.
López Obrador blames a deterioration of household values within the U.S. for the excessive ranges of drug habit in that nation.
An estimated 109,680 overdose deaths occurred final 12 months in the USA, in accordance with numbers from the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention. About 75,000 of these have been linked to fentanyl and different artificial opioids.
Cheap fentanyl is more and more minimize into different medicine, usually with out the patrons’ data.
Mexico’s fentanyl seizures usually come when the drug has already been pressed into drugs and is headed for the U.S. border.
U.S. prosecutors allege a lot of the manufacturing happens in and round Culiacan, the place the Sinaloa cartel exerts close to full management.
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