On Thursday, February 27, sources in Mexico and the United States confirmed the extradition of Rafael Caro Quintero, the notorious drug kingpin responsible for the torture and murder of DEA agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena in February 1985.
Caro Quintero served 28 years in a Mexican prison for his crimes, but in 2013, a judge released him early due to an obscure “technicality,” despite having received a 40-year sentence. His release sparked outrage from the United States. For nearly a decade, he was one of the FBI’s most wanted fugitives until his recapture in 2022 in Sinaloa. Since then, he had successfully contested extradition requests from U.S. authorities.
The extradition of Caro Quintero, often referred to as “El Narco de Narcos,” has long been a key objective of the U.S. Department of Justice, which has never strayed from its goal of seeing the drug capo be held accountable for Camarena’s murder in a U.S. court of law. The DEA agent, who was investigating drug trafficking in western Mexico, was abducted from outside the U.S. Consulate General in Guadalajara and tortured at a local residence, after which he was killed and his body dumped in a field in the state of Michoacan.
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