US asks for extradition of notorious Mexican drug cartel leader

A notorious Mexican drug cartel leader has been captured by a Bloodhound tracker dog, and now the US Authorities are insisting that he be extradited before the trail goes cold.

By James Blears

US Authorities offered a twenty million dollars reward for the re-capture of notorious drug trafficker Rafael Caro Quintero. And it was the Mexican Navy`s dogged work, thanks to six-year-old bloodhound MAX, who gets a pat on the back, for pulling off the arrest after a lead, finding the former cartel leader behind a bush, off the beaten track in the mountainous Badlands of his home State of Sinaloa.

Drug lord

Caro Quintero, aged 69, is now being held in a maximum security prison near Mexico City. He was jailed for forty years, having been convicted of ordering the torture and murder of Drugs Enforcement Agent Enrique "Kiki" Camerena in 1985.

After serving twenty-eight years, a Judge oddly released him in 2013, ruling he should have been tried in a State, rather than a Federal Court. By the time the decision was reversed, his henchmen had spirited him away and he was long gone. It`s taken until now to re-capture him and the United States wants him behind bars on US soil.

Deadly drug war

A quarter of a million people have died in Mexico`s ongoing Drug War, which started in 2006. But narcotics trafficking on a major scale, started long before this.

Caro Quintero`s illicit organization smuggled heroin, cocaine and marijuana into the United States. Now it looks like he`s headed there himself, thanks to canine intervention.

Listen to the report by James Blears