U.S. requests extradition of Ovidio Guzman, son of “El Chapo,” Mexico says

The US has requested Mexico to extradite a son of jailed drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman accused of following in his father’s footsteps, a Mexican authorities spokesman instructed AFP Monday.

Ovidio Guzman, who was captured in January, has allegedly helped to run his father’s notorious Sinaloa cartel since El Chapo was handed over to the USA in 2017. The high-profile seize got here simply days earlier than U.S. President Joe Biden visited Mexico for bilateral talks with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

The U.S. embassy in Mexico Metropolis introduced the extradition request to the overseas ministry and legal professional basic’s workplace, based on the spokesman, who didn’t wish to be named as a result of he was not approved to talk on the problem. Two Mexican authorities sources additionally instructed Reuters that the U.S. made the extradition request.

The US had provided a reward of as much as $5 million for info resulting in the seize of the 32-year-old, whose arrest within the northwestern metropolis of Culiacan sparked a violent cartel backlash.

Ovidio Guzmán had not been one in all El Chapo’s high-profile sons till an aborted operation to seize him three years in the past. That try equally set off violence in Culiacan that in the end led López Obrador to order the navy to let him go.

El Chapo is serving a life sentence in the USA for trafficking a whole bunch of tons of medicine into the nation over the course of 25 years.

Ovidio Guzman secured a court docket order in January blocking his instant extradition to the USA, and a decide gave the USA till March 5 to current an extradition request.

Ovidio Guzman is accused of serving to to supervise practically a dozen methamphetamine labs in Sinaloa in addition to conspiring to distribute cocaine and marijuana, based on Washington.

He additionally allegedly ordered the murders of informants, a drug trafficker and a Mexican singer who refused to carry out at his wedding ceremony.

He was captured briefly as soon as earlier than in 2019, however safety forces freed him after his cartel waged an all-out struggle in response.

Nonetheless, Ovidio Guzman just isn’t one of many drug lord’s best-known sons. Iván Archivaldo Guzmán and Jesús Alfredo Guzmán are often called “Los Chapitos,” or “the little Chapos,” and are believed to be operating their father’s cartel along with Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada.