RCQ, "El Rafa", Denied Amparo against US Extradition

Yaqui for Borderland Beat from: Milenio y Zeta
             
The Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) of Mexico refused to protect drug trafficker Rafael Caro Quintero against extradition to the United States which is ordered against him, so if he was arrested he could be sent to the US where he has outstanding warrant for his prosecution. 

During the session on Wednesday, the First Chamber unanimously endorsed the ruling of Minister Luis María Aguilar, who determined to deny the protection of justice to this criminal leader.  Since 2014, RCQ has held up through the amparo process in a  Mexican federal court the extradition treaty between Mexico and the United States.

“It is unquestionable that Articles 17 and 18 of the Extradition Law, as well as Article 11 of the Extradition Treaty between Mexico and the US (which provide for the figure of provisional detention as a precautionary measure), having its constitutional basis in article 119 , they cannot be considered unconstitutional, as the appellant intends, " says the operative. 

In November 2016, the now president of the highest court in the country, Arturo Zaldívar , prepared  the first motion for a resolution that planned to deny the protection for Caro Quintero , however, the drug trafficker filed a complaint and managed to postpone the ruling of his protection for extradition to the US.

Various social networks are circulating a photograph where Caro Quintero appears - one of the main drug lords in the 1980s , co-founder of the late Guadalajara Cartel - next to a young man whose identity is unknown. 

At the end of last July, Ray Donovan, special agent in charge of the Office of the Drug Control Administration (DEA), in New York, said Caro Quintero is the “priority” of the US Government

On March 28, aka "The Prince" or "Rafa", managed for the second time to prevent the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation from ruling on the amparo he promoted with which he intends to avoid his extradition to the United States.

The former president of the Supreme Court made public the draft sentence in which he proposed to the ministers of the First Chamber of the SCJN to deny the protection of justice to the Sinaloan capo, who on March 26 claimed the Extradition Treaty between Mexico and the US. UU., was unconstitutional. A petition was admitted for processing and turned over to Minister Jorge Mario Pardo Rebolledo.

That was the second time that Caro Quintero filed an amparo ( or stay) , since in November 2016, the Sinaloa drug trafficker claimed that the current president of the SCJN, Arturo Zaldívar Lelo de Larrea had prepared the ruling.

Aguilar Morales proposed in his draft sentence to deny the protection of the Sinaloa kingpin, and returned the matter to a collegiate court to review only questions of legality, and thereby determine whether Caro Quintero should be handed over to the US authorities.

On April 12, 2018, Caro Quintero was included in the list of the “Ten Most Wanted Fugitives” of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), for being the alleged intellectual author of the murder of the drug agent of United States, Enrique “Kiki” Camarena Salazar, a crime for which he had already purged a sentence of 29 years in prison in Mexico.

Caro Quintero, whom the FBI considers to be "armed and extremely dangerous" and for whom he offers a reward of $20 million for information leading to his capture, had denied in a videotaped interview that he is still active in drug trafficking and is on the run, " for a crime for which he has already paid."

In this interview, also published by the Aristegui News portal, the 66-year-old boss from Badiraguato, Sinaloa, asked the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) of the Department of Justice from the United States, and the Mexican Federal Government, to "do their job well" and "leave him alone."

In July 2016, in the interview published by the weekly Proceso, the Sinaloa kingpin had also said that he no longer belonged to a drug trafficking cartel  and that he did not kill Enrique “Kiki” Camarena, and besides that "he was not at war, not with  Joaquin Archivaldo Guzmán Loera, "El Chapo", or with Ismael Zambada García, "El Mayo"".

The accusation of the DEA and the New York Prosecutor's Office (EDNY Docket No. 15-CO-208 S-2) also detailed the "main role" of Caro Quintero "in the traffic of methamphetamine, heroin, cocaine and marijuana to the United States and other countries, and reflects their criminal activities from 1980 to 2017. ”

“On July 30, 1992, the District Court of the Central District of California issued a federal arrest warrant, accusing Caro Quintero of violent crimes in favor of organized crime, of conspiracy to kidnap a federal agent, of kidnapping a federal agent, to murder a federal agent, to help, instigate and to be complicit after that fact, ” said the US government.

“Today, together with our federal partners of the DEA, the Marshals Service and the State Department, we are committed to bringing this dangerous criminal and cartel leader to justice, who is responsible for the brutal murder of an agent of the DEA, ” said FBI Deputy Director David L. Bowdich.

“Special agent Camarena was dedicated to stopping drug trafficking and breaking the circle of drug-related crimes. He showed great courage to go after the most violent drug traffickers. And it is precisely because of this courage and dedication that we are not going to stop looking for Caro Quintero until we hit him and put him behind bars, where he belongs, ” said Bowdich.

At the beginning of the 1980s, Caro Quintero, at that time with 30 years of age, together with “Don Neto” and “The Godfather”, became one of the three leaders of the Guadalajara Cartel, which subsequently formed an alliance with the Medellín Cartel, led by Colombian trafficker Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria.

“Caro Quintero is considered as one of the 'godfathers' of drug trafficking, who helped form the Guadalajara Cartel in the late 1970s. Supposedly, he became one of the main suppliers of heroin, cocaine and marijuana to the United States and was in charge of the cartel in Costa Rica and on the border between the United States and Mexico, ” the US government said in its statement.

It was then that Enrique "Kiki" Camarena Salazar infiltrated the Guadalajara Cartel. In 1984, as a result of the information obtained by the American undercover agent, hundreds of Mexican soldiers stormed Buffalo Ranch, a marijuana plantation of the criminal group, whose estimated annual production was hundreds of millions of dollars.

“In November 1984, Mexican authorities raided a plantation of 2,500 acres of marijuana, owned by Caro Quintero. The Guadalajara Cartel blamed special agent "Kiki" Camarena Salazar for the raid, and decided to retaliate, ” the US government said.

"Special agent Camarena, a former marine, firefighter, police officer and deputy sheriff, was very close to discovering the route of millions of dollars to transport drugs for a million dollars from Mexico to the United States in 1985," he said. the US Government

“Kiki” Camarena Salazar and the aviator pilot of the former Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resources, Alfredo Zavala Avelar, were kidnapped by a group of armed men on February 7, 1985, in Jalisco. A month later their bodies were found on a ranch in the state of Michoacán, with signs of torture.

“Before he could expose drug trafficking operations, he was kidnapped en route to lunch with his wife on February 7, 1985 in Guadalajara, Jalisco. Supposedly, the direct orders of the kidnapping were given by Rafael Caro Quintero, ” the Government said.

“Camarena was surrounded by five armed men who threw him into a car and took him away. Camarena is believed to have died two or three days after his kidnapping, but his body was not found until March 5, 1985. The special agent Camarena is survived by his wife and three children. ” 

The Sinaloa chief, who had been sentenced to 40 years in prison for the crime of “Kiki” Camarena Salazar, spent 28 years in prison, but was released in August 2013 by a Jalisco State Court, which justified the decision with a legal technicality. 

Almost immediately, Caro Quintero disappeared after learning that the Attorney General's Office (PGR) obtained a new arrest warrant for extradition purposes to the US, whose Department of Justice offered a reward of $ 5 million for his capture, which rose to $ 20 million.

In December 2013, the then head of the PGR, Jesús Murillo Karam, revealed that Caro Quintero sent a letter to President Enrique Peña Nieto, in which he requested that he not be prosecuted further. However, currently the Sinaloa kingpin is wanted also by Mexico to serve the 12 years remained from his original sentence.

Until January 2015, the Second Unitary Court of the Third Circuit based in Guadalajara, in compliance with the ruling of the SCJN, again declared Caro Quintero and Fonseca Carrillo criminally responsible for the crimes of illegal deprivation of liberty in the modality of kidnapping and qualified homicide, leading to the deaths of the DEA agent and Mexican pilot Zavala Avelar.