Founder of Sinaloa Cartel Could Be Released This Week If No Warrants Found
A founder and leader of the Sinaloa cartel could be released from prison this week.
Héctor “El Guero” Palma Salazar, the 80-year-old former
aquaintance of drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, has been absolved of
organized crime charges by a Mexican judge and could potentially walk free this
week if prosecutors can’t find any outstanding warrants by Tuesday.
Palma was nearly released over the weekend, until
prosecutors reportedly won the extention. Palma was initally arrested in Mexico
in 1995 and served 12 years in Mexico on bribery and weapons charges. He was
was extradited to the U.S. in 2007 and served nine years for cocaine
trafficking. He then returned to Mexico as he awaited trial on the organized
crime charges of which he was just acquitted.
Some in Mexico—such as the country’s president—aren’t too
thrilled about the optics of his release. Just eight years ago, Rafael Caro
Quintero left prison with an improperly ordered release. He’s since returned to
drug trafficking and engaged in turf battles.
“This is a matter of national import,” Mexico’s President
Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Monday. “Imagine the suspicion, the jokes, the
memes.”
“Something similar happened when Mr. Caro Quintero was
released,” López Obrador, who previously called the release “justified,”
recalled. “They accused us from abroad, accused the government of complicity.
No foreign government should accuse the Mexican government, and we shouldn’t
give them a pretext to do that.”
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