After the United States put Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán behind bars for life, they now want to put his son on trial as well. The US Embassy in Mexico City has submitted an extradition request for 32-year-old Ovidio Guzmán to the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Attorney General’s Office, a Mexican government official, who asked not to be named, said on Monday (local time).
US authorities and experts assume that Ovidio Guzmán and his three brothers have taken command of the Sinaloa drug cartel following their father’s arrest. The United States has offered a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to Oividio Guzmán’s arrest. At the beginning of January he was finally caught in Culiacan, the capital of the state of Sinaloa. The operation killed 29 people – 10 military personnel and 19 suspected criminals.
Immediately following his arrest, Ovidio Guzmán obtained a court order that prevented his immediate extradition to the United States. A judge gave the US authorities until March 5 to file an extradition request.
The US accuses El Chapo’s son of overseeing nearly a dozen laboratories producing the synthetic drug methamphetamine in Sinaloa state and being involved in the trafficking of cocaine and marijuana. In addition, he is said to have commissioned several murders. For their part, the Mexican authorities are investigating Ovidio Guzmán for his involvement in organized crime and other crimes.
Ovidio Guzmán’s father, the founder of the Sinaloa Cartel, was at times one of the most wanted criminals in the world. In 2019, El Chapo was sentenced to life imprisonment by a New York court for drug trafficking, money laundering and weapons offenses, among other things. The 65-year-old is now in a prison in the mountains of Colorado, one of the best-secured prisons in the United States.