Mexico has extradited Ovidio Guzmán López, the son of drug lord Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán, to the United States. The US wants to prosecute 33-year-old Guzmán because he is suspected of drug trafficking, says US Justice Secretary Garland. His father was extradited in 2017 and is now serving a life sentence in the US’s most secure prison in Colorado.
Since his father was arrested, Ovidio, together with his brothers Archivaldo and Jesús Alfredo, played an important role in the Mexican drug trade. “This is the latest step by the Department of Justice to address every aspect of the cartel,” Garland said of the extradition.
In April, US authorities filed a series of charges against Ovidio and his brothers. Prosecutors say the brothers have been involved in trafficking synthetic drugs such as methamphetamine and the powerful opioid fentanyl since their father’s extradition.
The indictments state that the brothers’ goal was to produce large quantities of fentanyl and sell it for the lowest possible price. The drug is so cheap to produce that the cartel makes enormous profits from it. They are said to have made hundreds of millions of dollars from dealing in fentanyl. The drug, which is fatal at low doses, has swept the US in recent years, causing many deaths.
Deaths upon arrest
‘The Mouse’, as Ovidio is nicknamed, was captured in January after a bloody battle in Culiacán and immediately afterwards put on a plane to Mexico City.
Dozens were killed in the arrest in the capital of the western state of Sinaloa, which shares the name of the notorious drug cartel. Ten soldiers and at least nineteen suspected cartel members were killed. Culiacán was completely paralyzed, the Mexican Minister of Defense said at the time.
To capture Guzmán, the military had to use Black Hawk attack helicopters to arm themselves against .50-caliber machine guns that the cartel had mounted on trucks. Cartel gunmen fired on the planes and forced the pilots to land. The cartel then sent armed men to the airport where a firefight broke out between them and soldiers.
More than three years earlier, in 2019, the National Guard also captured the drug boss, but then things went terribly wrong. Because Guzmán was not immediately removed from the region, a lot of violence broke out. To prevent further chaos and bloodshed, Mexican President López Obrador decided to release Ovidio that same day. This earned him a lot of criticism.
El Chapo
Father ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán is known as one of the biggest drug lords in the world. He was arrested twice in Mexico and managed to escape from prison in spectacular fashion just as many times.
After his third arrest, the former boss of the Sinaloa drug cartel was extradited to the United States, where he was convicted and imprisoned.
Want to know more about El Chapo? Watch the video:
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