2023-09-16 22:39:18
This Friday, Mexico extradited to the United States Ovidio Guzmán López, alias “El Ratón”, one of the heirs of the Sinaloa Cartel since his father, drug trafficker Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán, is serving a life sentence. The drug trafficker was arrested last January in Mexico and was imprisoned in the Altiplano penitentiary center in the State of Mexico, in the center of the country. The Mexican authorities accuse him of crimes once morest health and carrying firearms, but they are also investigating him for crimes linked to organized crime.
Ovidio Guzmán had already been detained on October 17, 2019 in Culiacán (northwest), but was released by order of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador in the midst of a raid by the criminal organization.
LOOK: Mexico extradites Ovidio Guzmán, son of El Chapo Guzmán, to the United States to face drug trafficking charges
The leftist president then defended his decision, stating that a bloodbath was avoided when military personnel were surrounded by armed people.
“Today, as a result of cooperation between Mexican and United States law enforcement, Ovidio Guzmán López, leader of the Sinaloa cartel, has been extradited to the United States,” reported US Attorney General and Secretary of Justice Merrick Garland. it’s a statement.
Washington accuses him of “drug trafficking, money laundering and other violent crimes,” Liz Sherwood-Randall, White House National Security Advisor, detailed in another statement.
The first image of Ovidio Guzmán being extradited was shared this Saturday on the social network X, formerly Twitter, by former Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent Derek S. Maltz. In the photo he is seen handcuffed on board the plane that took him to the United States. He looks thin and with a worried face.
“Hot blooded”
33 years old, thin and with thick eyebrows, Guzmán is considered the head of “Los Menores”, a faction of the Sinaloa Cartel, founded four decades ago.
He is the best known of “Los Chapitos”, a clan also formed by his brothers Joaquín, Iván Archivaldo and Jesús Alfredo Guzmán.
He is known as “El Ratón”, a nickname his father would have given him, according to a corrido dedicated to him by the musical band Codigo FN.
LOOK: What the United States accuses Ovidio Guzmán of, the son of ‘El Chapo’ who was extradited by Mexico
In the song “I am the mouse” he is described as a “boss with a lot of brains”, with “hot blood and action”, and with a passion for luxury cars.
The United States Anti-Drug Agency (DEA) is on the warpath once morest the Sinaloa Cartel, which it considers to be primarily responsible for fentanyl trafficking.
This drug, 50 times more powerful than heroin, has caused a good part of the 109,000 overdose deaths in 2022 in the country, according to preliminary data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Sherwood-Randall insisted that President Joe Biden’s administration will continue to use all available tools to “vigorously counter the deadly scourge of fentanyl and other narcotics that are killing so many Americans.”
And that means collaborating closely with Mexico, where most of the fentanyl that enters the country comes from.
Ovidio Guzmán, son of drug trafficker Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán, when he was captured for a few hours on October 17, 2019. (AFP).
According to Washington, Mexican cartels negotiate the sale and import of chemicals from China with which they manufacture this opioid.
The fentanyl crisis has led a group of US Republican congressmen months ago to request that cartels be designated as “terrorist” groups in order to combat them wherever they are.
Mexico protested and, following comings and goings of authorities, the diplomatic gale subsided. Mexico is one of more than 80 countries in the global coalition once morest synthetic drugs.
This Friday, the US government had words of praise for the US and Mexican security forces, as well as the military.
Many of them “have given their lives in the pursuit of justice,” Garland said.
“We will always be grateful to them for their brave and tireless efforts,” added the National Security Advisor.
The arrest operation of Ovidio Guzmán in January alone left 29 dead, including 10 soldiers and 19 alleged criminals, when members of the Sinaloa Cartel tried to rescue their boss.
DEA and government officials accuse the Sinaloa Cartel of acting with excessive brutality.
In April, Garland explained that his contempt for life is such that “Los Chapitos” fed pet tigers “some of their victims, dead or alive.”
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