Mexican justice halts extradition of drug trafficker Caro Quintero to the U.S.

The Seventh District Court of Amparo in Criminal Matters in the Mexican state of Jalisco has granted the suspension of the extradition process of drug trafficker Rafael Caro Quintero to the United States.

“The suspension is granted outright, to the effect that it will not be executed and the interested party will remain in the place where he is at the disposal of this amparo jurisdictional body, only with regard to his personal liberty, until the present amparo trial is resolved,” the judge said, according to the Mexican press.

The amparo has been requested by Beatriz Angélica Caro Quintero, sister of Caro Quintero, founder of the Guadalajara cartel, and in it she alleges that the extradition procedure included in the Extradition Treaty between Mexico and the United States has not been followed.

On the other hand, the Thirteenth District Judge of Amparo in Criminal Matters in Mexico City, Guillermo Francisco Urbina Tanús, has admitted another amparo by which he is granted a flat suspension to prevent him from being held incommunicado or subjected to “forced disappearance”.

Until August 2013, Caro Quintero was serving a sentence for the murder of a U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) agent, Enrique Camarena Salazar, but was released from prison through an amparo reversed two years later by the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN). Washington has requested Mexico to extradite him, which was authorized by the SCJN on October 9, 2019.