The DEA always get their man… eventually. In this case, the Drug Enforcement Agency succeeded on their lucky thirteenth attempt, finally nabbing 69-year-old Mexican drug cartel leader Rafael Caro Quintero, the Washington Post reports.
Caro Quintero topped the DEA’s fugitive list because he was responsible for the 1985 kidnap and murder of DEA agent Kiki Camarena, who was assassinated in Guadalajara. Caro Quintero spent time in a Mexican jail before being released on a technicality in 2013.
US law enforcement and intelligence agencies had been tracking Caro Quintero’s movements for the last nine years as he moved from camp to camp in jungles around northwest Mexico. US agencies planned multiple operations to drop into the camps and snatch Caro Quintero, but the operations were canceled due to a number of different factors: weather, questionable intelligence or failed diplomatic efforts.
The Mexican government is claiming sole credit for the capture of Caro Quintero on July 15th, but the DEA task force responsible for capturing him has stated it supplied the Mexican military with his location after tracking him to a camp and verifying his presence.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador traveled to Washington for a meeting with US President Joe Biden on July 12th, during which Biden reportedly pressed López Obrador to act on new information the US had gathered on Caro Quintero, stressing the American desire to bring him to justice.
After López Obrador returned to Mexico, Mexican military officials signed off on a plan to capture Caro Quintero when his location was verified. That reportedly happened when a neighbor complained about noise coming from a party on one of his compounds. When Mexican military raided the location, Caro Quintero wasn’t found. A six-year-old hound named Max located him hiding in some scrub bush and he was arrested.