US asks Mexico to extradite son of Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman
The US has asked Mexico to extradite Ovidio Guzman, son of notorious drug boss Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.
Two Mexican government sources told Reuters news agency that the US government wants the younger Guzman to face criminal charges in a US court.
The 32-year-old has been charged in the US with conspiracy to traffic cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana into the country.
He was arrested in Mexico in January near the city of Culiacan in northern Sinaloa state.
His arrest prompted a wave of violence that left at least 19 suspected gang members and 10 military personnel dead.
Mexican soldiers had tried to arrest him in 2019 but his capture sparked a massive influx of gunmen into Culiacan, forcing authorities to retreat.
The following month, an officer involved in the arrest was killed after being shot 155 times in a car park nearby.
The incidents highlighted the difficulties involved in cracking down on the drug cartels which control large parts of Mexico.
Guzman’s father, known as El Chapo, was the head of the Sinaloa drugs cartel before he was extradited to the US in 2017.
El Chapo was convicted by a New York court in 2019 of 10 counts of drug trafficking, firearms and money laundering charges, and is currently in a US maximum security prison.
During his 25-year leadership of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, he went from being a small time marijuana smuggler to being the head of the “largest drug trafficking organisation in the world… with thousands of members”, US authorities said at the time.
It smuggled around 154 tonnes of cocaine into the US, as well as heroin and methamphetamine – earning El Chapo and his associates $14bn (£11.6bn), they added.
