The king emerged as the co-founder of the Guadalajara Cartel, one of Latin America’s most powerful drug-trafficking organizations in the 1980s, and was among the most valuable targets for US officials. The US government welcomed the arrest and said it would waste no time in seeking his extradition. “It’s huge,” White House senior Latin America adviser Juan Gonzalez said on Twitter. Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register The Mexican Navy said in a statement that Caro Quintero was arrested in the municipality of Choix in the northwestern state of Sinaloa, one of Mexico’s drug-trafficking hotbeds. She was found in brush land by a trained female hound named Max, the Navy said. The arrest in San Simon, Choix, comes after pressure from the United States, according to a Mexican official, and the same week that President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador met with US President Joe Biden in Washington. Caro Quintero spent 28 years in prison for the brutal murder of former US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena, one of the most notorious killings in Mexico’s bloody drug wars. The events, dramatized in the 2018 Netflix series “Narcos: Mexico,” brought U.S.-Mexico cooperation to a nadir in a five-decade “war on drugs.” Caro Quintero has previously denied involvement in Camarena’s murder. He was released in 2013 on a technicality by a Mexican judge, embarrassing the previous government. He quickly went underground and returned to trafficking as part of the Sinaloa cartel, according to US officials, who put him on the FBI’s Top 10 Most Wanted Fugitives list and put a $20 million bounty on his head, a record for a drug trafficker. Last year, he lost a final appeal against extradition to the United States. It will be extradited as soon as possible, another Mexican official said. “It’s probably one of the most significant arrests of the last decade in terms of significance for the DEA,” said Mike Vigil, the DEA’s former head of international operations. US Attorney General Merrick Garland said he would seek Caro Quintero’s immediate extradition. “There is no hiding place for anyone who kidnaps, tortures and murders US law enforcement. We are deeply grateful to the Mexican authorities for the capture and arrest of Rafael Caro-Quintero,” Garland said in a statement. While 69-year-old Caro Quintero is no longer considered a major player in international drug trafficking, the symbolic impact of his capture is significant. For Mexican security expert Alejandro Hope, the arrest indicates significant cooperation between the United States and Mexico despite recent security clashes. “This type of arrest is unthinkable without the involvement of the DEA,” he said. Mexico’s reluctance to extradite Caro Quintero to the United States before his release has been a source of tension between the two countries. A US official said Washington was very keen to extradite him. “This will hopefully begin to mend the frayed relationship between the United States and Mexico in terms of combating drug trafficking,” said former DEA official Vigil. In its statement, the Navy said 14 of its personnel died after a Black Hawk helicopter crashed in the town of Los Mochis, Sinaloa, on Friday. The cause of the crash is under investigation, but so far there is no information indicating that the incident is related to the capo arrest, the Navy said. Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register Reporting by Lizbeth Diaz, Drazen Jorgic, Dave Graham and Jackie Botts. Additional reporting by Diego Ore. Written by Drazen Jorgic and Brendan O’Boyle. Editing by Stephen Eisenhammer, Rosalba O’Brien and William Mallard Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
