Drug lord Hector “El Guero” Palma, one of the founders of the Sinaloa Cartel, returned to his native Mexico after serving almost a decade in a US prison and was immediately transported to another maximum-security lockup where he is to await trial for two murders.
US authorities handed over Palma in Matamoros, across the border from Brownsville, Texas, according to a statement from the Mexican Attorney General’s Office.
Palma had been released from federal prison in California on Friday and put into the custody of US immigration officials. The drug lord was flown to Mexico City late on Wednesday and then transported to the Altiplano prison outside the capital, the same prison that Sinaloa Cartel leader Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman escaped from last year.
Palma was detained under an arrest order from the western state of Nayarit. No additional details were provided about the two murders.
Earlier, Mexican officials had said they did not know whether authorities in Mexico planned to bring new charges against Palma. If not, Palma would go free.
Mexican Attorney General Arely Gomez had said her office was reviewing whether there were any pending cases against Palma.
“We are in the process of carrying out an exhaustive review, checking all the prosecutors’ offices,” she said.
Palma was arrested in June 1995 in western Mexico and later extradited to the US where he pleaded guilty to cocaine trafficking charges and was sentenced to 16 years in prison.
Even before he was extradited to the US in 2007, Palma had compiled an excellent track record of beating charges in Mexico.
He was acquitted, or had the charges dismissed, for accusations including multiple counts of murder, kidnapping, robbery and drug possession.
In Mexico, Palma, known as “El Guero” for his fair hair, served only a two-and-a-half-year sentence for minor convictions including weapons violations.
Mexico appears unable to do a very good job of keeping Palma in jail. He essentially fell into the hands of law enforcement in 1995 after his plane crashed.
“There are a lot of individuals in Mexico, government officials, that are a little bit perplexed because they feel that if the United States wanted Palma, that he should have remained in prison here for a lot longer time ... And then you’re letting him go very quickly,” said Mike Vigil, a former head of international operations for the US Drug Enforcement Administration.
Palma “is extremely, extremely, extraordinarily vicious,” Vigil said.
He became vicious after his wife was seduced by a rival trafficker, who had her withdraw a purported US$7 million from Palma’s bank accounts, then beheaded her and sent her severed head to Palma. Venezuelan trafficker Rafael Clavel then allegedly took Palma’s two children, aged four and five, and threw them off a bridge.
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