(Washington) A major member of the Sinaloa drug trafficking cartel in Mexico has been extradited to the United States, the US Secretary of Justice announced on Saturday.
“This morning, Nestor Isidro Perez Salas, also known as “El Nini,” was extradited to the United States,” said Merrick Garland, thanking Mexican authorities for their cooperation.
According to him, El Nini was “one of the principal sicarios, or assassins, of the Sinaloa cartel and that he was responsible for the murder, torture and kidnapping of rivals and witnesses who threatened the criminal enterprise of cartel drug trafficking.”
Joe Biden thanked his Mexican counterpart in a statement, stressing that the trafficker played an “important” role within the Sinaloa cartel, which he called “one of the deadliest drug trafficking organizations in the world” .
“Our governments will continue to work together to combat the fentanyl and synthetic drug epidemic that is killing so many people in our countries and around the world,” Biden said.
Nestor Isidro Perez Salas is close to the sons of drug lord Joaquin Guzman, aka “El Chapo”, who is serving a life sentence in the United States.
He was arrested in November 2023 in Culiacan, northwest Mexico, less than a week after U.S. President Joe Biden and Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador pledged to coordinate more closely in the fight against drug trafficking, particularly fentanyl, a powerful synthetic drug.
According to American justice, El Nini also “participated in the production and sale of fentanyl by the Sinaloa cartel, including in the United States”.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the United States recorded more than 107,000 overdose deaths in 2023. Fentanyl was the cause of approximately 70% of them.