About 4,500 troops remain deployed in Culiacán and nearby places, after the offensive unleashed by the Sinaloa Cartel to rescue its boss, held hundreds of kilometers away in El Altiplano, the high-security prison from where his father escaped in 2015. A year later he was recaptured and sentenced to life imprisonment in the United States.
The uniformed removed on Friday dozens of stolen and burned cars throughout the city of 800,000 inhabitants, in whose streets fierce battles were fought on Thursday that reached the international airport. The air terminal remained closed until Friday when it was announced to reopen, while residents cautiously sought to resume their activities after the day of terror.
Rubén Rocha, governor of Sinaloa, whose capital is Culiacán, gave a part of tranquility. “We can relax a little, do the priority activities,” he said. At some points, however, traffic continued to be interrupted by vehicles reduced to ashes, but no new clashes or blockades were reported.
The operation to arrest Guzman, 32, left 10 soldiers and 19 suspected criminals dead, Defense Secretary Luis Cresencio Sandoval said Friday. Among the dead soldiers is a colonel, while another 35 soldiers were wounded by bullets and 21 gunmen were arrested, the officer added.
U.S. Requests His Extradition
Washington, which is demanding the extradition of Guzman, accused of leading the methamphetamine trade, welcomed the capture on Friday. “We’re going to continue to work to see what we can do together to try to eliminate that flow,” John Kirby, spokesman for the National Security Council, told reporters, referring to the smuggling of fentanyl, a drug 50 times more potent than heroin and responsible for numerous overdose deaths in the United States.
But Guzman, with several outstanding accounts in Mexico, obtained a judicial suspension against an immediate extradition to that country. The Mexican government clarified that the U.S. request will run its regular course.
Some of the most dramatic scenes after the capture were lived at the Culiacán airport, where a commercial plane was hit by a bullet moments before taking off and passengers had to throw themselves to the ground to safety. Two Air Force aircraft were also hit and had to make emergency landings, Sandoval revealed.
Guzman’s capture came on the eve of a visit by U.S. President Joe Biden, who will arrive in Mexico on Sunday to meet Monday with his Mexican counterpart, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, and participate in the North American Summit on Tuesday.
The Mexican government denied that the arrest was to ingratiate itself with Biden and stressed that there was no participation in the operation by Washington, which offered a reward of five million dollars for alias “El Ratón.”
“We act with autonomy, with independence, there is cooperation and there will continue to be, but we make decisions as a sovereign government,” the leftist president said Friday. After the arrest, only one image of Guzmán has been seen, showing him bearded and boarding the helicopter that took him to jail. Mexican law prohibits public exposure of defendants.
The leader of the “Chapitos”, as the heirs of “Chapo” Guzmán are known, had already been arrested on October 17, 2019 in Culiacán, but was released by order of López Obrador in the middle of a coup by the criminal organization. The president then defended his decision, saying that a bloodbath was avoided, when military contingents were surrounded by civilians with long weapons.
López Obrador stressed that this time it was “completely different”, because the operation was executed in the periphery and not in the heart of Culiacán so as not to put the population at risk. Founded four decades ago by “Chapo”, the Sinaloa Cartel is considered by the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to be primarily responsible for fentanyl trafficking.
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