(CNN Spanish) — Rafael Caro Quintero, considered the “narco of drug traffickers” and who had been a fugitive since 2013, he was arrested on July 15 by the Mexican Navy.
Caro Quintero, born in 1952, founded the now-disintegrated Guadalajara Cartel with Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo and other drug traffickers in the 1970s and was allegedly responsible for the cultivation, shipment and distribution of large quantities of marijuana in Mexico, according to the US Department of State
Against him weighs an extradition order to the United States. This July 18, a judge temporarily suspended the extradition process.
Caro Quintero is accused of kidnapping, torturing and murdering the DEA special agent Enrique Kiki Camarena in 1985according to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
From 1982 to 1984, Camarena had investigated Caro Quintero’s drug trafficking organization and led to drug seizures that severely damaged that criminal group, according to the State Department.
The US authorities say that since 1984 members of Caro Quintero’s organization allegedly participated in a series of actions to retaliate against the DEA and that in 1985 Caro Quintero and others murdered John Clay Walker and Alberto Radelat, two American citizens who they mistook for members of the DEA.
Following the 1985 murder of Camarena and Alfredo Zavala Avelar, a pilot assisting special agent Camarena, Caro Quintero fled to Costa Rica but was later arrested and extradited to Mexico, where he was sentenced to 40 years in prison for murder. After his arrest, the Guadalajara Cartel disintegrated and its leaders were incorporated into the Tijuana Cartel, the Sinaloa Cartel and the Juárez Cartel, the State Department says.
Camarena’s murder was attributed to the Guadalajara cartel led by Caro Quintero and was considered a revenge of drug trafficking because the agent’s investigations led to the seizure of one of the largest marijuana plantations in history, at the El Búfalo ranch, in Chihuahua.
Freedom and fugitive life
In 2013, a court ruling set him free., after a Mexican state court concluded that he had been improperly judged. However, a Mexican federal court issued an arrest warrant for Caro Quintero shortly after that release. Since then he is a wanted fugitive in Mexico, the United States and several other countries.
In January 2015 the accusations against him were reactivated for the crimes of kidnapping and homicide in 1985, of the member of the United States Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), Enrique Camarena.
In an interview with the magazine Process in 2016, fugitive drug trafficker Rafael Caro Quintero admitted being at the scene where undercover DEA agent Enrique Camarena was killed in 1985, but denied any involvement in his death.
In 2017 the authorities confirmed Rafael Caro Quintero was still active in drug trafficking with “el Mayo” Zambada and both would be the leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel at the time, according to the US Drug Enforcement Agency’s “National Drug Threat Assessment” report.
in 2018 Caro Quintero was included in the list of the 10 most wanted fugitives of the FBIaccording to the authorities of the FBI, the DEA and the Department of State of the USA.
That year Caro Quintero told the journalist Anabel Hernández, in an interview this year from hiding, that he was not a drug trafficker and that he lives off the help of others.
The charges against Caro Quintero
Caro Quintero was indicted in the United States Central District of California for kidnapping and murder of a federal agent, conspiracy to kidnap a federal agent, violent crimes in support of organized crime, conspiracy to commit violent crimes in support of organized crime, aiding and abetting, abetting after the fact, possession with intent to distribute marijuana and cocaine, and continuing criminal enterprise, as recorded by the State Department.
With information from Rey Rodríguez, Ione Molinares, CNNMéxico, CNN Expansión