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The Mexican government has extradited two drug traffickers to the United States, one of them a former collaborator with the infamous drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, announced Mexico's Attorney General Arely Gomez Sunday.
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Gomez confirmed that the two inmates, Cesar Gastelum Serrano, a member of the powerful Sinaloa Cartel, and Alejandro Rubio Perez were transferred from their prisons to the airport in Toluca, about 47 miles north of Mexico City.
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“Here, their formal delivery to the relevant U.S. authorities was realized,” said the attorney general in a press statement.
Both men were arrested for their relationship to organized crime and drug trafficking. Gastelum also reportedly has strong links with El Chapo, the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, who has twice escaped from federal maximum-security prisons in Mexico.
Gastelum has also been on the list of most wanted narcotraffickers by the U.S. Treasury Department since 2014.
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The inmate has been known for “large-scale cocaine trafficking through the Colombia-Honduras. Guatemala route to Mexico with a final destination in the United States,” according to former head of the National Security Commission Monte Alejandro Rubio when Serrano was first arrested in April.
Rubio was arrested in November 2013 on similar charges.
According to Gomez, Mexico has extradited 44 persons to the U.S. in one year, between September 2014 and the same month this year, on request of the U.S. government.
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