Mexican drug Lord Rafael Caro Quintero pleads guilty in 1985 the killing of the agent after US extradition – FirstPost

After years, as one of the most sought after men of the American authorities, the head of Mexican drug cartel, Rafael Caro Quintero, was brought to a New York court to respond to accusations that include the orchestration of an American federal agent from 1985.

The White House called Caro Quintero “one of the worst cartel heads in the world” in a statement before its notification, where over 100 drug application administration and other federal officials filled a large ceremonial court.

Dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit, Caro Quintero, 72, spoke a little during a short procedure, while his lawyer entered an innocent plea on his behalf.

Another leader of the cartel, Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, 62 years old, was also guilty through a lawyer. He is accused of arranging abductions and killings in Mexico, but he is not accused of involving the agent of Da Enrique “Kiki” Camarena, whose killing was dramatized in the Netflix series “Narcos: Mexico”.

Prosecutors say that Caro Quintero blamed Camarena for a foray on a huge marijuana plantation and kidnapped the agent, tortured and killed as revenge.

“For 14,631 days, we continued to hope – we hope this moment will come. I hope we will live to see the responsibility. And now, this hope has eventually transformed it into reality, “the family Camarena said on Friday, in a statement, thanking President Donald Trump and to all those who worked.

Carrillo Fuentes and 27 other Mexican prisoners were sent to eight American cities on Thursday. The movement came while Mexico sought to eliminate the threat of the Trump administration to impose 25% rates on all Mexican imports next week. In exchange for delaying tariffs, Trump insisted that Mexico collapsed on cartels, illegal immigration and fentanel production.

The members of the Mexico security office framed the transfer of the 29 prisoners as a national security decision on Friday.

“It is not a commitment to the United States. It is a commitment to ourselves, “said the Prosecutor General Mexican, Alejandro Gertz Manero. “The problem of drug trafficking and organized crime was a real tragedy for our country.”

Caro Quintero has long been one of the best Mexican targets in America for extradition. As head of the Cartel in Guadalajara, “Narco of Narcos” and its partners “were pioneers of drug trafficking to Colombia, Mexico and the United States,” said US lawyer John Durham from Brooklyn, outside the court.

An indictment accuses Caro Quintero of presiding a widespread criminal network of sewerage tons of heroin, methamphetamine, marijuana and cocaine in the USA.

He was 28 years old in a 40-year sentence in Mexico, when a court of appeal overturned the sentence in 2013. The Supreme Court of Mexico later confirmed, but until then, Caro Quintero had been released and was in the wind. Authorities said he had returned to drug trafficking and unleashed bloody lawn battles in the northern Mexico border state, until he was arrested by the Mexican forces in 2022, the authorities said.

Caro Quintero told the Spanish newspaper El País in 2018 that he “never returned to drugs.”

“I was a drug dealer 23 years ago and now I am not, and I will never be,” he said, according to the newspaper.

The USA added Caro Quintero to the list of the most sought after FBI in 2018, with a reward of $ 20 million. Washington sought his extradition immediately after his 2022 arrest, which happened days after a meeting from the White House between President Joe Biden and his Mexican counterpart, then President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

The extradition request stopped while López Obrador severely reduced his country’s cooperation to protest against American law enforcement operations targeting Mexican political and military officials.

In January, a non -profit group representing the Camarena family asked the new Trump administration to renew the extradition request.

Frank Terentino III, a special agent responsible for the DEA office in New York, named Camarena on Friday a “symbol of strength, honor and determination.”

Carrillo Fuentes is the brother of the drug Lord Amado Carrillo Fuentes, known as “Mr. Skies”, who died in 1997. Carrillo Fuentes, nicknamed “Viceroy”, continued the brothers’ business until his arrest in 2014.

He was sentenced to Mexico in 2021 to 28 years in prison.

US prosecutors say his Juarez card has brought tons of cocaine to the country. But his lawyer, Kenneth Montgomery, took the target on Friday that Carrillo Fuentes is responsible for the flow of drugs in the US, saying that he started before taking over and continued for a long time after his arrest.