Key cartel witness found dead before drug agents could fly him to U.S.

 Chivis Martinez Borderland Beat  Source

Weapons seized during capture of El Chicken link to BB post here

Carlos Almada Castrillo, of Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación could have been a key witness for U.S. prosecutors as they work to topple the global drug empire.  (allegedly, El Chicken worked directly for El Sapo or 090 top lieutenant of Mencho)

But he was found hanging in a Mexican jail.

Investigators and experts tracking drug cartel developments say the 27-year-old's death is likely a murder disguised as a suicide to prevent him from testifying in the U.S., both a senior official with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and a Mexican political analyst told the Courier Journal.

Almada, known as "El Pollo" or "El Chicken" for his small neck and larger head, is one of high-ranking members of CJNG — a top U.S. target — to die under suspicious circumstances before officials could secure their extraditions to the U.S.

That's three dead witnesses, which illustrate the difficulty in bringing down CJNG, which along with the infamous Sinaloa Cartel, export the bulk of illegal drugs to the U.S. — including a synthetic opioid that is now America's No. 1 killer, fentanyl. Underscoring the urgency to weaken the cartels, U.S. health officials expect overdose deaths to top 70,000 amid the deadliest drug epidemic in American history.

Last fall, federal police and members of the SEDENA, Mexico's national defense, teamed to arrest Almada and three alleged accomplices on September 26, 2019 in Zapopan, a city in the Mexican state of Jalisco, headquarters for CJNG.

At the time of Almada's arrest, the country's National Defense Ministry issued a public statement detailing their seizure of a cache of weapons, including 22 assault rifles and 2,600 cartridges as well as grenades and grenade launchers capable of downing aircraft. They tagged Almada as the head of CJNG's operations in the metropolitan region of Guadalajara and reported finding several packages of cocaine, methamphetamine and tactical gear.

A senior DEA official, who spoke only on background because Almada's death is being investigated by Mexican law enforcement — not U.S. officials — said some of the cache of seized weapons, including military-grade assault rifles,were traced back to U.S. The bulk of illicit drugs fueling America's deadliest drug crisis is coming from Mexico, but Mexican leaders say cartels are largely armed with American weapons due to lax U.S. gun laws.

Experts said it's likely Almada would have known a lot of cartel secrets. That's because he grew up with the cartel leader's son, Rubén Oseguera González, known as "Menchito" or  "Lil' Mencho" and remained part of his inner circle, according to a retired DEA supervisor who once participated in the hunt for El Mencho. Menchito stood to inherit control of the cartel but was arrested in Mexico in 2017.

Five months after Almada's arrest, Menchito was extradited to the U.S. despite three years of court battles to keep him in Mexico. Menchito's attorney in Mexico, Victor Francisco Beltrán García, told The Courier Journal that Menchito's extradition was abrupt and illegal and banned by a Mexican judge.

However, Alfonso Durazo, Mexico's security minister, told reporters the extradition had been in the works for eight months.

Menchito now sits in a U.S. jail cell awaiting trial in federal court in Washington, D.C. on drug trafficking charges.

Eager to bring Almada to Washington, D.C., to garner information against Menchito, U.S. officials obtained a provisional arrest warrant, which labeled Almada a flight risk and asked Mexican authorities to detain him while both countries worked to secure his extradition.

But Almada's body was found at 11 a.m. March 5 in his small jail cell next to a toilet in Puente Grande federal prison in the state of Jalisco. He died of mechanical asphyxia by hanging, according to a copy of the death certificate. But it didn't specify if the death was suicide or homicide.