The US formalizes extradition request for Ovidio Guzmán

The son of ‘El Chapo’, apprehended in January 2023 after a special operation in Sinaloa, is accused by the US justice of criminal association to import and distribute drugs in the English-speaking country.

According to numerous reports published in the Mexican and international press, the request was received by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE) of the Latin American country and then turned to the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) almost two months after he was arrested for the second time.

He is considered one of the leaders of the Sinaloa cartel, also known as the Pacific cartel.

The request to transfer Ovidio Guzmán comes just days before the March 5 deadline set by a Mexican judge for the United States to formalize its demand for the extradition of the alleged drug trafficker, who is being held in Almoloya prison in the state of Mexico.

Despite the urgency of the United States, the process could take months or even years since the defense of Guzmán, alias “El Ratón”, could continue to file appeals to delay the extradition, as it has been doing.

On March 6, Guzmán’s defense won a legal victory after a federal judge granted a stay of his fast-track extradition to the United States.

The ruling, handed down by Mexico City’s Sixth District Court of Amparo in Criminal Matters, obliges the Mexican Attorney General’s Office and the Foreign Ministry to exhaust the ordinary stages of the extradition process.

Guzmán was captured for the second time at the beginning of the year near Culiacán, the capital of the state of Sinaloa, amid fighting between members of his group and military and police forces.

The first attempt to arrest him on October 17, 2019, culminated in his release by authorities and resulted in a political crisis for the Mexican government.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador revealed that he had decided to release him to avoid a wave of violence and the loss of life that his arrest would have provoked.

According to figures released by the Mexican government, the operation to arrest Guzman on January 5 left 10 security forces dead, and 19 alleged criminals also lost their lives.

“This arrest represents a resounding blow to the top echelon of the Pacific cartel’s power,” Mexico’s Secretary of National Defense Luis Cresencio Sandoval said earlier this year, describing the narco group allegedly led by Ovidio and his brother Joaquin Guzman as a “generator of violence in four states and the northwest region of the country.”

At the end of 2019, the military command had pointed to Ovidio Guzman as one of the main traffickers of methamphetamines and fentanyl to the US.

For his part, the US ambassador to Mexico, Ken Salazar, recently demanded in an interview that Guzmán be extradited “so that he can be given the punishments he deserves.”

With information from Sputnik