After years as one in all U.S. authorities’ most needed males, Mexican drug cartel boss Rafael Caro Quintero was introduced right into a New York courtroom Friday to reply expenses that embrace orchestrating the 1985 killing of a U.S. federal agent.
The White Home known as Caro Quintero “one of the most evil cartel bosses in the world” in a press release earlier than his arraignment, the place greater than 100 Drug Enforcement Administration brokers and different federal officers stuffed a big ceremonial courtroom.
Wearing an orange jail jumpsuit, the 72-year-old Caro Quintero spoke little through the transient continuing as his lawyer entered a not responsible plea on his behalf.
One other cartel chief, Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, 62, additionally pleaded not responsible via an lawyer. He is accused of arranging kidnappings and killings in Mexico however not accused of involvement within the demise of DEA agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena, whose killing was dramatized within the Netflix collection “Narcos: Mexico.”
Prosecutors say Caro Quintero blamed Camarena for a raid on an enormous marijuana plantation and had the agent kidnapped, tortured and killed as revenge.
“For 14,631 days, we held on to hope — hope that this moment would come. Hope that we would live to see accountability. And now, that hope has finally turned into reality,” Camarena’s household stated Friday in a press release thanking President Donald Trump and everybody who labored on the case.
Caro Quintero, Carrillo Fuentes and 27 different Mexican prisoners have been despatched Thursday to eight U.S. cities. The transfer got here as Mexico sought to stave off the Trump administration’s menace of imposing 25% tariffs on all Mexican imports subsequent week. In alternate for delaying tariffs, Trump had insisted that Mexico crack down on cartels, unlawful immigration and fentanyl manufacturing.
Members of Mexico’s Safety Cupboard on Friday framed the switch of the 29 prisoners as a nationwide safety choice.
“It is not a commitment to the United States. It is a commitment to ourselves,” stated Mexican Lawyer Normal Alejandro Gertz Manero. “The problem of drug trafficking and organized crime has been a true tragedy for our country.”
Caro Quintero has lengthy been one in all America’s prime Mexican targets for extradition. As head of the Guadalajara cartel, the “Narco of Narcos” and his partners “pioneered drug trafficking routes to Columbia, Mexico and into the United States,” Brooklyn-based U.S. Lawyer John Durham stated outdoors court docket.
An indictment accuses Caro Quintero of presiding over a sprawling prison community answerable for channeling tons of heroin, methamphetamine, marijuana and cocaine into the U.S.
He was 28 years right into a 40-year sentence in Mexico when an appeals court docket overturned his sentence in 2013. Mexico’s Supreme Courtroom later upheld it, however by then, Caro Quintero had been launched and was within the wind. Authorities stated he returned to drug trafficking and unleashed bloody turf battles within the northern Mexico border state of Sonora till he was arrested by Mexican forces in 2022, authorities stated.
The U.S. added Caro Quintero to the FBI’s 10 most needed checklist in 2018 with a $20 million reward. Washington sought his extradition instantly after his 2022 arrest, which occurred days after a White Home assembly between then-President Joe Biden and his Mexican counterpart, then-President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
The extradition request stalled as López Obrador severely curtailed his nation’s cooperation with the U.S. to protest undercover American regulation enforcement operations concentrating on Mexican political and army officers.
In January, a nonprofit group representing the Camarena household requested the brand new Trump administration to resume the extradition request.
Frank Tarentino III, particular agent accountable for the DEA’s New York workplace, on Friday known as Camarena a “image of energy, honor, and willpower.”
Carrillo Fuentes is the brother of drug lord Amado Carrillo Fuentes, generally known as “The Lord of The Skies,” who died in 1997. Carrillo Fuentes, nicknamed “The Viceroy,” continued the brothers’ enterprise till his arrest in 2014.
He was sentenced in Mexico in 2021 to twenty-eight years in jail.
U.S. prosecutors say his Juarez cartel introduced tons of cocaine into the nation. However his lawyer, Kenneth Montgomery, took intention Friday at any notion that Carrillo Fuentes is answerable for the stream of medicine into the U.S, saying it started earlier than he took energy and continued lengthy after his arrest.
