Wife of Fugitive Mexican Drug Lord Arrested and Released

The wife of drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, Mexico’s most wanted man, has been arrested, media outlets said Thursday.

Griselda Lopez Perez was arrested Wednesday in Culiacan, the capital of the western state of Sinaloa, La Jornada newspaper said on its Web page.

Sources at the Attorney General’s Office and in the defense department told Efe they had no information on the matter.

However, other official sources confirmed that searches were carried out at several homes in Culiacan. Mexican law enforcement said anti-drug units searched seven homes seizing safes, jewels and luxury cars in the Sinaloan capital of Culiacan on Wednesday.

La Jornada said that Lopez Perez was arrested at a house on Cerro Siete Gotas Street.

The spot is known to journalists in Sinaloa as the regular residence of Lopez Perez and, according to reporters consulted by Efe, some 400 federal police and soldiers were seen in the area on Wednesday.

After the arrest, Lopez Perez was flown to Mexico City on a plane chartered by the federal AG office, La Jornada said. The Attorney General of the Republic (PGR) reported  that the next day Griselda López Rojas or Karla Pérez Rojo was set free on "reservations of the law"

Lopez Perez, 43, has had three children with Joaquin Guzman, including Edgar Guzman Lopez, who was murdered in Culiacan in 2008.

“El Chapo” (Shorty) Guzman, thought to be around 50, leads the Sinaloa drug cartel and appears on Forbes magazine’s latest list of the world’s richest people, with a fortune estimated at more than $1 billion.

The drug lord escaped from a maximum security prison in January 2001. Both the Mexican and U.S. government have posted multimillion-dollar rewards for information leading to Guzman’s capture.