A high murderer for the Sinaloa drug cartel who was arrested by Mexican authorities final fall has been extradited to the U.S. to face drug, gun and witness retaliation fees, the Justice Division mentioned Saturday. Néstor Isidro Pérez Salas, often known as “El Nini,” is a frontrunner and commander of a gaggle that offered safety for the sons of imprisoned drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, and likewise helped of their drug enterprise, federal investigators mentioned.
Néstor Isidro Pérez Salas Was A High Murderer For The Sinaloa Drug Cartel
WASHINGTON (AP) — A high murderer for the Sinaloa drug cartel who was arrested by Mexican authorities final fall has been extradited to the U.S. to face drug, gun and witness retaliation fees, the Justice Division mentioned Saturday.
Néstor Isidro Pérez Salas, often known as “El Nini,” is a frontrunner and commander of a gaggle that offered safety for the sons of imprisoned drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, and likewise helped of their drug enterprise, federal investigators mentioned. The sons lead a faction generally known as the little Chapos, or “Chapitos,” that has been recognized as one of many principal exporters of the lethal artificial opioid fentanyl to the U.S.
Fentanyl is blamed for about 70,000 overdose deaths per 12 months in the US.
“We allege El Nini was one of many Sinaloa Cartel’s lead sicarios, or assassins, and was answerable for the homicide, torture, and kidnapping of rivals and witnesses who threatened the cartel’s felony drug trafficking enterprise,” U.S. Lawyer Common Merrick Garland mentioned in a information launch Saturday.
Court docket data didn’t record an lawyer for Pérez Salas who would possibly touch upon his behalf.
The Justice Division final 12 months introduced a slew of fees towards cartel leaders, and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration posted a $3 million reward for the seize of Pérez Salas, 31. He was captured at a walled property within the Sinaloa state capital of Culiacan final November.
In a written assertion, President Joe Biden thanked Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador for extraditing Pérez Salas.
“Our governments will proceed to work collectively to assault the fentanyl and artificial drug epidemic that’s killing so many individuals in our homelands and globally, and to carry to justice the criminals and organizations producing, smuggling, and promoting these deadly poisons in each of our nations,” Biden mentioned.
The nickname Nini is seemingly a reference to a Mexican slang saying “neither nor,” used to explain youths who neither work nor examine.
On the time of his arrest, Mike Vigil, former head of worldwide operations for the usDrug Enforcement Administration, known as him “an entire psychopath.”
Pérez Salas commanded a safety group generally known as the Ninis, “a very violent group of safety personnel for the Chapitos,” in accordance with an indictment unsealed final 12 months in New York. The Ninis “acquired military-style coaching in a number of areas of fight, together with city warfare, particular weapons and techniques, and sniper proficiency.”
Pérez Salas participated within the torture of a Mexican federal agent in 2017, authorities mentioned. He and others allegedly tortured the person for 2 hours, inserting a corkscrew into his muscle groups, ripping it out and inserting sizzling chiles within the wounds.
In response to the indictment, the Ninis carried out grotesque acts of violence.
The Ninis would take captured rivals to ranches owned by the Chapitos for execution, with some victims fed — lifeless or alive — to tigers the Chapitos raised as pets, the indictment mentioned.
