Mexican officials extradited the suspected drug trafficker known as the “Queen of the Pacific” to the US on Thursday. Sandra Avila Beltran was handed over at the Toluca airport outside Mexico City to US marshals who took her to Miami to face federal cocaine-trafficking charges, the attorney general’s office said.
Avila had been acquitted of similar charges in Mexico and her defense argued unsuccessfully that meant she should not be extradited.
In June, a court granted the extradition so she could face the charges pending in the US, where prosecutors allege she also had links to cocaine seizures in Chicago. In 2001, US agents intercepted a telephone call in which Avila allegedly asked for payment for 100kg of cocaine delivered in Chicago.
Federal prosecutors said the extradition request indicates Avila belonged to an organization that trafficked cocaine from Colombia to the US. US prosecutors allege she helped store and move shipments of the drug from Mexico to the US.
Until Thursday, Avila had been held in a prison in Mexico’s Pacific coast state of Nayarit, pending trial for a separate money-laundering charge. It was not immediately clear how Mexican prosecutors would proceed with that case. Avila, who was arrested in 2007 sipping coffee in a Mexico City diner, has said she is innocent.
Prosecutors have alleged that Avila spent more than a decade working her way to the top of Mexico’s drug trade. They say her romance with Colombian Juan Diego Espinoza brought together Mexico’s powerful Sinaloa cartel with Colombia’s Norte del Valle. The Sinaloa cartel led by drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman has been locked in a vicious fight with the violent Zetas gang in several regions of Mexico.
CHAGOS ISLANDS: Recently elected Mauritian Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam told lawmakers that the contents of negotiations are ‘unknown’ to the government Mauritius’ new prime minister ordered an independent review of a deal with the UK involving a strategically important US-UK military base in the Indian Ocean, placing the agreement under fresh scrutiny. Under a pact signed last month, the UK ceded sovereignty of the Chagos archipelago to Mauritius, while retaining control of Diego Garcia — the island where the base is situated. The deal was signed by then-Mauritian prime minister Pravind Jugnauth and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Oct. 3 — a month before elections in Mauritius in which Navin Ramgoolam became premier. “I have asked for an independent review of the
France on Friday showed off to the world the gleaming restored interior of Notre-Dame cathedral, a week before the 850-year-old medieval edifice reopens following painstaking restoration after the devastating 2019 fire. French President Emmanuel Macron conducted an inspection of the restoration, broadcast live on television, saying workers had done the “impossible” by healing a “national wound” after the fire on April 19, 2019. While every effort has been made to remain faithful to the original look of the cathedral, an international team of designers and architects have created a luminous space that has an immediate impact on the visitor. The floor shimmers and
THIRD IN A ROW? An expert said if the report of a probe into the defense official is true, people would naturally ask if it would erode morale in the military Chinese Minister of National Defense Dong Jun (董軍) has been placed under investigation for corruption, a report said yesterday, the latest official implicated in a crackdown on graft in the country’s military. Citing current and former US officials familiar with the situation, British newspaper the Financial Times said that the investigation into Dong was part of a broader probe into military corruption. Neither the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs nor the Chinese embassy in Washington replied to a request for confirmation yesterday. If confirmed, Dong would be the third Chinese defense minister in a row to fall under investigation for corruption. A former navy
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