Reputed drug trafficker Sandra Avila Beltran, known as “The Queen of the Pacific,” was transferred from a Mexico City jail to a federal prison, just days after officials said she did not receive a Botox injection while behind bars.
Avila Beltran, who had been held at the Santa Martha Acatitla women’s prison on the outskirts of Mexico City since September 2008, was moved to an unidentified federal prison on Monday.
Avila Beltran was given a one-year prison sentence on a weapons charge last month, but she will not have to serve any additional time because she has been jailed for more than three years, prosecutors said.
She will not be released because of a pending extradition request from U.S. authorities, the Attorney General’s Office said.
A judge ordered Avila Beltran and her former boyfriend, Juan Diego Espinosa, released on Dec. 3, citing lack of evidence that they were involved in organized crime and drug trafficking.
Federal prosecutors appealed the judge’s decision on Jan. 4 and a ruling is not expected for several months.
Seven inmates facing federal charges were moved from Santa Martha Acatitla “to federal correctional centers by police,” the Mexico City bureau of prisons said.
One of the inmates transferred to federal facilities was Sandra Avila Beltran, Mexico City officials said.
The transfer was carried out under agreements between Mexico City and federal authorities that call for inmates “subject to different proceedings and extradition trials” to be sent to federal prisons while their cases move through the justice system, the Mexico City bureau of prisons said.
Avila Beltran and Espinosa, a suspected Colombian drug trafficker known as “El Tigre,” were arrested on Sept. 28, 2007, for allegedly smuggling nine tons of cocaine into the Pacific port of Manzanillo aboard the ship Macel.
She allegedly served as an intermediary between Colombian drug traffickers and Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel.
The suspected drug trafficker was considered one of the few powerful women in an illegal industry dominated by men.
After her arrest, the Mexican press compared Avila Beltran to the main character in Spanish writer Arturo Perez-Reverte’s novel “La Reina del Sur” (The Queen of the South) and she inspired a popular “corrido,” or ballad, by Los Tigres del Norte.
The U.S. State Department considers Avila Beltran a “veteran member” of the Sinaloa cartel, Mexico’s most powerful drug trafficking organization, who was “instrumental” in maintaining the gang’s relations with Colombian suppliers.
That is probably my favorite book, or at least one of them. Wish it could have been a good movie, but they would probably get it all wrong. Anyone else read it?
ReplyDeleteDef. influenced by this Sandra Beltran.
Got halfway thru reading this and had to stop and watch La Reina del Sur. Ill finish later
ReplyDelete"The Queen of the Pacific" has got nothing on the baddest female gangster ever, Griselda Blanco "The Godmother". She was the meanest and most powerful Colombian kingpin in Miami. I highly recommend two documentaries about her ( Cocaine Cowboys 1 and 2). About the Miami drug wars.
ReplyDeleteSandra will get out soon just like all the other scum.
Does anyone know what kinds of charges she will face when extradited to the states?
ReplyDeleteSo how is this "catch and release" working for Mexico? The lax judicial system I would think is 95% of the problem, I mean hell any young man growing up in poor country that sees the narcos all having the big trucks and money and when captured are right back on the streets is it no wonder they get into that life?
ReplyDeleteA year or two in a prison where if you have money you can purchase what ever you like, La Barbie has catered food and designer clothes and a 28" LCD Flat Screen TV and a space heater so he doesnt get chilled at night! Its pathetic... Mexico has created there own problems and I do not feel a bit sorry for any one of them over the age of 18...
Its the smaller children that are the ones suffering because they are truly innocent and their spirits know that what they are seeing everyday is evil and wrong and they suffer in fear every day and every night and for that I damn every narco into Mexico to rot in hell for eternity! - Grande Goat Horn
SOME OF THIS PEOPLE ARE LOOKED AT LIKE HEROES, AND THAT IS REAL SAD..I LIVE IN MEXICO AND I WAS SITTING OUT SIDE ENJOYING THE AFTERNOON WHEN I NOTICE KIDS PLAYING AROUND, THER WAS TWO KIDS HOLDING ONE KID AND ANOTHER ONE WAS SLAPPING HIM, AND WILE HE SLAPPED HIM HE WAS SAYING "I'M COMANDANTE SIERRA WHO DO YOU WORK FOR?" THIS KIDS WHER IN BETWEEN 5 AND 7 YEAR OLDS, WHAT HAPPEND TO SUPERMAN AND SPIDERMAN...REAL SAAD
ReplyDeleteSomeone smuggle in her plastic surgeon quickly, she is beginning to look like another type of Queen.
ReplyDeletejust saying
In her end she will end up swinging from a bridge or worse. There is only hell for these people.
ReplyDeleteThat is one crack head looking bitch.
ReplyDeleteDo us all a favor and lock her up forever for being so ugly!!
Nah she's pretty cute for an (ex) drug baron.
ReplyDeleteI THINK SHE IS SO FIRME!!!
ReplyDeleteShe looks like Michael Jackson.
ReplyDeleteWhy don't they have any "evidence" that she had connections with the Columbian cartels? My
ReplyDeletegod, she dated a major Columbian drug cartel member. Curious about the story of smuggling 9 tons of cocaine on ship Macel...how did that translate to be a weapons charge with a one year sentence??
Mexican authorities became supsicious after she paid a $5 million ransom for her kidnapped son and in 2002 "started investigating her, and by July 2002 had found evidence linking her to the Macel shipment. They also linked her to other members of Mr. Espinosa’s family, among them a woman who was arrested at the Mexico City airport carrying about $1.5 million, prosecutors say."
ReplyDeleteI wonder wy the evidence was so flimsy??
@2:42am
ReplyDeleteCocaine cowboys 1 and 2 are very hyped up documentaries which have a target audience of wannabe gangbangers and thugs. The colombian god mother that you speak of was broker between a black street gang and the columbian connection and thats it (moving a couple bricks). Sandra avila has been around drug trafficking ever since she was born. Her great uncle was Payan and her family has been in the narcotics business since the 70's. When the US government closed up the Bahamas cocaine route a very long time ago, cocaine had to be moved through Mexico, the columbians had no other choice. The Mexican cartels moved massive quantities of coke in the the US, this was beyond the wildest dreams of any columbian capo. This is how chapo guzman began his criminal carreer in the 80's working directly for Miguel angel Felix transporting cocaine from south America to Mexico.
Yeah, 'Cocaine Cowboys' one was ok, just ok, but 2 was awful, and I think very much a bunch of lies and exaggerations told by a snitch to make a flimsy, unbelievable documentary, if you could call it that. She looks ok to me, I mean, yeah, plastic, but still....
ReplyDeleteThat book is great though, reading it again this week.
Fuck yea bro cocaine cowboys is very much a bunch of lies butnla reyna del pacifico has nothing to do with la reyna del sur now that was a bad bitch teresa is not sandra get your facts straight
ReplyDeleteI understand that, as one is fact, and the other fiction. I am not a child. But, Sandra Avila Beltran definitely influences or inspired the story.
ReplyDeleteI heard on the news that this lady is Rafael Caro Quintero's niece, is that true?
ReplyDeleteI think she needs to be in prison for a long time
ReplyDeletei think she get away.
ReplyDeleteSANDRA BELTRAN AVILA SHOULD BE RELASED FROM PRISON SHE IS SO HOT TO BE IN PRISON WITH ALL THE OTHER UGLY WOMEN
ReplyDeleteDoes anyone know which prison I can write to contact ms Avila Beltran luv her.
ReplyDelete