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Tuesday, October 4, 2016

Chapo's extradition might get blocked by a Mexican judge, but the government may have a way around it

Posted by Chuck B Almada, Republished from Business Insider
Written by Christopher Woody (Business Insider)
Saturday 1 October, 2016

Photo courtesy of BI
Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán's appeals against his extradition went before a judge in Mexico City on September 26, but that judge may takes weeks to rule, and the appeals process that is sure to play out after his decision is sure to drag on for weeks if not months. At the end of all that, a Mexican court may rule against the government's decision earlier this year to accede to extradition requests from two US District Courts, a possibility that can't be discounted, especially since Guzmán's legal team has argued that the kingpin was mistreated by state authorities.
But the disapproval of the Mexican judicial system would not be the death knell of the Peña Nieto government's efforts to rid itself, and Mexico, of Guzmán.


"As a technical matter, the Mexican executive [branch] is not at all dependent on the Mexican judicial system to approve of extradition," Peter Vincent, a former legal adviser at the US Department of Homeland Security, told Business Insider. "It in fact has unilateral authority ... to ultimately approve of extradition, because extradition is after all a diplomatic matter, best handled by the executive branch."

There is precedent for the Mexican government to overrule a decision by a court in order to carry out a high-profile extradition request. Alberto Benjamin Arellano Felix, reputedly the leader of the powerful Tijuana cartel at the time, was captured by Mexican authorities in March 2002. Arellano Felix was sentenced to 22 years in jail in Mexico, but efforts to extradite him to the US stalled.

The US government's extradition request was held for several months because of translation delays and other administrative issues. This was compounded by the change of government in Mexico at the end of 2006, when Felipe Calderon took office. The process hit another roadblock in May 2007, when a Mexican judge ruled against Arellano Felix's extradition saying that he would be tried for charges he had already faced in Mexico.
Photo courtesy of BI

But in 2008, the Mexican government dismissed this objection, paving the way for Arellano Felix to be sent to the US. At the time, the Mexican attorney general's office said Arellano Felix had been tried for drug trafficking and other offenses committed prior to 1997, and that he would face trafficking charges for years after that in the US. Moreover, according to USA Today, he was wanted in the US for money laundering, for which he wasn't tried in Mexico. That opinion was not binding on the government, though it was required to consider it.
"The ultimate decision on whether to extradite an individual rests exclusively with the Secretary of Foreign Affairs [SRE], which, of course, is part of the executive branch, which is controlled by the president," Vincent told Business Insider. "That is, the SRE is not required to follow the judge’s recommendation."

Arellano Felix's subsequent appeals were denied, and Mexican authorities surrendered him to US officials in San Diego in April 2011. He took a plea deal and was sentenced to 25 years in April 2012. The judge elected to credit him for the time he spent in US custody, but upon the completion of his US sentence, around the time he is 80, he will have to serve the remainder of his 22-year sentence in Mexico.
Mexico's reversal on Arellano Felix's extradition was part of a relaxation of the country's extradition policies that took place in the mid-2000s, as the Vicente Fox and Calderon governments' ramped up efforts to fight cartels. Mexico had previously refused to extradite high-profile drug bosses, as they could have faced the death penalty or life imprisonment — sentences Mexico's legal system does not issue — in a US court. The US eased the charges against Arellano Felix in 2003 to avoid those sentences, but Mexico later installed a legal workaround.

As Vincent noted:
 "In 2005, the Mexican Supreme Court struck down a constitutional provision that had banned life imprisonment with no chance of parole sentences. As such, Mexico can and had extradited Mexican citizens to the United States even when they would face a life sentence. They will not, however, extradite if the death penalty is being considered. The United States makes 'diplomatic assurances' that it will neither seek nor impose the death penalty in those cases."

But for Guzmán — a capo almost without rival who faces a bevy of charges in the US (and whose cartel won a bloody war with the Arellano Felix cartel in the 1990s and 2000s) — the Mexican government may not need to take executive action.

"What the Mexican authorities ... are sensitive to is allegations that the Mexican executive is essentially denying ... a Mexican citizen of his constitutional rights, and [they are] not likely to countermand in this ... very high-profile instance any decision by the Mexican judiciary not to extradite," Vincent told Business Insider.

"All indications are, however, that the Mexican judicial system ultimately will approve or allow the extradition of Mr. Guzmán," he stressed.

22 comments:

  1. Is el mayo and el Azul the last of the old Capos then?

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  2. SR #701 nunca pisara un dia en carcel Americana .

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    1. Nunca? Ya no fumes help! Jajjajjajaja en 2017 estara en Colorado valiendo Verga,ahi si va llora!

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    2. Y luego que suceda que? Se cortan las venas y o dejan de chingar todos los lambe huevos como tu?

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    3. Sr. #701 no, pero como ya es seños #700000001! Ese chaputo si!

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    4. Sigue illusionandote todo perro tienen su dia y tarde que temprano vendra la dia del el chapo a estados unidos

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    5. Hes not real 701 mencho and los cuinis are richer and chapo will be in us prison in the end

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    6. Alegan como si se fueran a beneficiar seguramente los malandros le van a rolar dinero por estar alegando a favor de un cartel al otro.

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    7. 4:42 even the US anda valiendo verga, from the stalemate in Korea, to dar las nalgas in vietnam, bolivia, cuba, nicaragua, ecuador, guatemala, chile, argentina, el salvador, honduras, iran, irak, afghanistan, laos , cambodia, turkey, gaza, "eastern ukrainia", (where the light brigade got facked up for good one las time) and all over the Arab world, sometimes through the good offices of AMERICAN PRIVATE MILITARY CONTRACTORS CREATING PROBLEMS "ONLY THEY CAN SOLVE", like the ISIS conundrum, and iran embassy taking and hostages and benghazi, that was supposed to get mitt elected, hahahaaa...
      --I would say somebody is shooting the US on the foot while trying to shoot the US on the ass...for reasons of personal enrichment...
      --Trapping all the mexican narcos will change NOTHING...

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  3. http://www.eldiariodelnarco.com.mx/2016/10/ejercito-difunde-foto-de-el-kevin.html

    this is the person who got rescued in sinaloa

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  4. It's gonna take a few more years of chapo going balled and stressing of his ultimate outcome (U.S.) but eventually will be in max security prison. Uncle Sam wants his cut $$

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    1. BB please ya dejense de mamadas con este cuento del chapo. He ain't going nowhere any time soon and you this mannnnne

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  5. http://www.noventagrados.com.mx/seguridad/abandonan-4-cadaveres-torturados-en-apatzingan.htm Foto.

    Might be a relation to Hipólito Mora's group in La Ruana:

    http://www.noticiasmvs.com/#!/noticias/encuentran-4-cadaveres-en-buenavista-michoacan-podrian-ser-de-religiosos-742

    ¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨
    http://www.monitorexpresso.com/encuentran-ejecutados-a-los-4-jovenes-desaparecidos-en-la-ruana/

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  6. The intensity of the violence in Michoacan has forced some priests into social activism, although the moves are rarely welcomed by the Catholic hierarchy.

    One such priest is the Rev. Jose Luis Segura Barragan, who is among the most high-profile opponents of drug cartels in the state.

    After he was appointed parish priest in the town of La Ruana in 2013, Segura voiced support for the armed self-defense groups that had sprung up in response to rampant insecurity in the region. Groups of locals soon tried to drive him out of town.

    "Because I didn't leave, people fired bullets and threw rocks and fireworks at the church," he told RNS.

    https://www.facebook.com/mrlatreo

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  7. Hey Check B......We are so appreciative of the commitment you have in saving BB. Great job!!

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  8. So wait la oficina n CDS together I thought la oficina was under the BLO in aguascalientes?

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  9. http://www.noticiasmvs.com/#!/noticias/confirma-hipolito-mora-que-cadaveres-encontrados-en-tierra-caliente-corresponden-a-jovenes-religiosos-803

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  10. Thank you for better clarifying this. I read an article about various cases with extradition worldwide, while in law school. I wondered if Mexico complied with this. So this should make Chapo supporters rethink the outcome. Unless another escape or rescue occur, extradition is inevitable.

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    1. epn would not want to send la chapa to a country whose president is a self professed "populista" in cahoots with the self professed canadian populista teacher-prime minister, who professed for populism right in front of epn's motherfacking face, in public...just because epn was the shortest guy there.

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  11. Hey thanks alot for all the info...they shouldn't send him to the US....because if Trump wins he is just going to send him right back! Lol

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  12. As the article mentions, Mexican law on extradition provides that the executive may decide unilaterally to extradite a prisoner to the U.S. for, among other reasons, public safety concerns. This authority is not subject to appeal. For some reason, the Pena Nieto government has not opted to do this in Chapo's case, but, given recent events, the Mexican president may decide to put Chapo away for good. In any case, Chapoi's intelligence value has probably decreased because of his long incarceration(s), but his capacity to make trouble appears to remain unaffected.

    I have always assumed that Chapo has remained in control of his part of the Sinaloa organization from prison. However, things have spun out of control for the government, so it may decide to get rid of one variable.

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