Caro Quintero declares not guilty of Agent of the DEA agent in 1985

After years of being one of the most wanted men by the authorities of the United States, Mexican drug trafficker Rafael Caro Quintero was taken on Friday to a New York court To respond to various positionsincluding orchestrate the murder of the agent of the Enrique «Kiki» Camarena in 1985.

Caro Quintero declared himself not guilty of directing a criminal company that is still in operation. Separately, Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, leader of another poster, also declared himself innocent. He is accused of organizing kidnappings and murders in Mexico, but he is not charged with Camarena’s death.

Caro Quintero, Carrillo Fuentes and another 27 Mexican prisoners were sent on Thursday to eight cities in the United States, in an attempt in Mexico to prevent the government of President Donald Trump from fulfilling his threat of imposing 25 % tariffs on all Mexican imports next week.

For Camarena’s family, appearances marked a highly anticipated moment.

“For 14,631 days we cling to hope, the hope that this moment will arrive. The hope that we would live to see justice be done. And now, that hope has finally become a reality, ”the family said in a statement, thanking Trump and all who have worked in the case over the years.

In a statement on Friday before the appearances, the White House said that Caro Quintero is «one of the most evil posters in the world.»

In exchange for delaying tariffs, Trump had insisted that Mexico take energetic measures against posters, illegal immigration and fentanyl production.

But the members of the Mexican security cabinet framed the transfer of the 29 prisoners as a national security decision.

«It is not a commitment to the United States, it is a commitment to ourselves,» said Mexican Attorney Alejandro Gertz Manero. «That is, the problem of drug trafficking and organized crime has been a true tragedy for our country.»

The Secretary of Security, Omar García Harfuch, indicated that the people sent to the custody of the United States were «generators of violence» in Mexico and represented a threat to the security of both countries.

Washington has long since wanted to obtain the extradition of Caro Quintero.

He was one of the founders of the Guadalajara poster and one of the main suppliers of heroin, cocaine and marijuana to the United States at the end of the 1970s and in 1980.

Caro Quintero kidnap, torture and kill Camarena in 1985 because he blamed the agent of a raid in a huge marijuana plantation the previous year, authorities said. Camarena’s murder marked a low point in relations between the United States and Mexico, and was dramatized in the popular Netflix series «Narcos: Mexico.»

Caro Quintero had turned 28 of a 40 -year sentence in Mexico when an appeal court annulled its verdict in 2013.

After his release, he returned to drug trafficking and unleashed bloody territorial battles in the border state of Sonora, until Mexican forces arrested him in 2022, according to the authorities.

In 2018, Caro Quintero told the Spanish newspaper the country that «I have not returned to drugs, I will ever come back.»

“What they are saying, lie who says it! He is lying! ”He said, according to the newspaper. “I am not working, that is very clear! I was drug trafficker 23 years ago, I am no longer and I will not be either. ”

The United States, which in 2018 added to Caro Quintero to the list of the 10 most wanted of the FBI with a reward of 20 million dollars, requested its extradition immediately after Your arrest in 2022. This happened days after the presidents of Mexico and the United States at that time, Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Joe Biden, respectively, met at the White House.

But the application remained in Limbo while López Obrador severely restricted the cooperation of his country with Washington to protest American police operations against Mexican political and military officials.

Then, in January, a non -profit group that represents the Camarena family sent a letter to the new Trump government to ask him to insist on the extradition application.

Carrillo Fuentes is the brother of the drug trafficker Carrillo Fuentes, known as «The Lord of the Skies», who died in a failed plastic surgery in 1997. Carrillo Fuentes, known as «El Virrey,» continued his brother of smuggling of drugs through the border until his arrest in 2014.

In 2021 he was sentenced to 28 years in prison for organized crime, money laundering and possession of weapons.

Among the other extradited are outstanding members of Mexican groups of organized crime to which the Trump government has recently designated “foreign terrorist organizations”.

Among them there are posters leaders, security leaders of both factions of the Sinaloa cartel, financial operations and a man sought in relation to the murder of a North Carolina police in 2022.

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