La Barbie was arrested in 2010 shortly after one of his bosses, Sinaloan drug trafficker Arturo “El Barbas” Beltran Leyva, was gunned down by Mexican marines in Cuernavaca, about 30 miles south of Mexico City.
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Edgar Valdez Villarreal, an ex-Texas high school football player, …
Those extradited include suspects in two sets of killings in 2011 involving Americans, and occur weeks after the somewhat embarrassing jailbreak of kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. Jorge Costilla Sánchez, the former leader of the Gulf Cartel, faces charges related to marijuana importation and distribution, money laundering, and threatening federal officers.
“Today’s extraditions would not have been possible without the close collaboration and productive relationship the Department of Justice enjoys with officials at the highest levels of law enforcement in Mexico”, U.S. Attorney General Lynch said in a statement.
The United States is also turning over a few suspects it has detained back to Mexican authorities.
“It’s clearly a recognition on the part of the Mexican government that they can’t depend on their prison system after Chapo, they don’t want a future embarrassment”, said Duncan Wood, director of the Mexico Institute at the Wilson Center.
The Attorney General of Mexico identified 13 defendants extradited this week, including Jose Emanuel Garcia Sota, at top left. He was known as “El Coss”, Newsweek reported, and was caught in September 2012. Agents arrested him after he arrived in Las Vegas in 2013 on a flight from Mexico.
“He was known for his ruthlessness, he was one of the cartel’s henchman”, a law enforcement official told CNN.
“We have carried out the extraditions of 13 individuals… on court extradition requests from several jurisdictions in the United States”, said Tomas Zeron, who leads the criminal investigation unit at the Justice Ministry.
The following 12 defendants were placed in the custody of U.S. Marshals Service late this afternoon.
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President Enrique Pena Nieto’s decision to try Guzman in Mexico instead of immediately extraditing him to the United States past year has come under scrutiny since the escape.
