Last Updated on: 17th July 2022, 11:44 am
Police Arrested Mexican Drug Dealer Rafael Caro Quintero AKA Lord
Rafael Caro Quintero, a suspected Mexican drug trafficker, was arrested on July 15 for allegedly plotting the 1985 murder of Kiki Camarena, a US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) intelligence officer. According to the BBC, Rafael Caro Quintero, 69, was a founding member of the Guadalajara cartel, which controlled the illegal drug trade along the US-Mexico border for many decades until his recent case.
Rafael Caro Quintero was arrested in 1985 for the death of Enrique Camerena, who was investigating cartel operations. Quintero was released in 2013 when a Mexican court reduced his sentence from 40 to 12 years. Although the verdict was eventually overturned by the nation’s Supreme Court, it was already too late as Quintero was already on the run and had apparently resumed his drug trafficking operations while in hiding.
I am told the Rafael Caro Quintero capture op was led by a SEMAR unit, the Mexican equivalent of the Navy SEALs, and occurred in the mountains of northern Sinaloa, in an area that is “very rural, no roads”
— Keegan Hamilton (@keegan_hamilton) July 15, 2022
Mexican Drug Dealer Rafael Caro Quintero AKA Lord Career
Rafael Caro Quintero was born in Sinaloa, Mexico to farming parents. After the death of his father in 1964, the 14-year-old took on various unskilled jobs to support his family. According to CNN Mexico, Quintero apparently started growing and trading marijuana in his teens. In five years his fortune would have skyrocketed, making him a recognized figure in the Mexican underground.
Quintero allegedly founded the Guadalajara Cartel with his fellow criminals in the late 1970s after gaining sufficient authority among drug dealers. According to the Los Angeles Times, the group “pioneered” Mexico’s drug trade, offering unprecedented scale and complexity. Quintero was wanted by US authorities not only for alleged drug trafficking but also for the deaths of at least three US citizens.
According to El Economista, Quintero was accused of ordering his subordinates to arrest and torture two Americans who accidentally walked into a cartel party in Guadalajara in January 1985. The two Americans, the author John Clay Walker and the dental student Albert Radelat, were kidnapped and tortured for a long time. Radelat would have been buried alive.
