Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Wednesday urged the US to disclose the whereabouts of a infamous drug trafficker whose identify has disappeared from the U.S. jail register.
Edgar Valdez Villarreal, a Mexican-American nicknamed "La Barbie" for his honest complexion, was captured by Mexico in 2010 and extradited to the US, the place he was sentenced to 49 years in jail.
Media experiences lately revealed that the previous henchman of the Beltran-Leyva cartel not seems in a search of the Federal Bureau of Prisons' on-line register of inmates.
"The US authorities has to clear it up as quickly as potential," Lopez Obrador informed reporters, including that Mexico was awaiting a response.
"We will proceed asking them," he added, describing the case as "odd" for the reason that trafficker nonetheless had a few years to serve until he struck a cope with the U.S. authorities.
The Bureau of Prisons informed AFP that the Texas-born Valdez "will not be at present within the custody" of the U.S. federal company, which may very well be for a number of causes.
"Inmates who had been beforehand in BOP custody and who haven't accomplished their sentence could also be outdoors BOP custody for a time period for courtroom hearings, medical remedy or for different causes," it mentioned.
"We don't present particular data on the standing of inmates who aren't within the custody of the BOP for security, safety, or privateness causes," it added.
In keeping with prosecutors, Valdez started his drug trafficking profession in Laredo, Texas, and shortly developed cocaine prospects in New Orleans and Memphis. He ultimately entered right into a relationship with Arturo Beltran-Leyva, who was then related to the Sinaloa Cartel and Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman in Mexico, prosecutors alleged.
Valdez, prosecutors mentioned, then started coordinating shipments of cocaine into Mexico utilizing speedboats and airplanes, whereas additionally paying bribes to native legislation enforcement officers. The cocaine was then allegedly transported throughout the border into the U.S.. Prosecutors mentioned Valdez turned a top-level enforcer for the cartel and coordinated a warfare in opposition to his rivals, the Gulf Cartel and Zetas in Mexico.
Finally, DEA brokers had been in a position to construct the case in opposition to Valdez utilizing wiretaps, seizures of over 100 kilograms of cocaine and $4 million of drug proceeds, and witness testimony, prosecutors mentioned.
When Valdez was sentenced in 2018, the Justice Division mentioned he was "ruthlessly working his manner up the ranks of one in all Mexico's strongest cartels, leaving in his wake numerous lives destroyed by medicine and violence."