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This is how they captured the 'queen of cocaine' in Honduras after offering the United States a reward of five million dollars

2022-05-16T19:51:09.648Z


Herlinda Bobadilla, 61, is accused of leading the largest cartel in the country with her two sons. One of them died in the operation but the other managed to escape.


Herlinda Bobadilla, 61-year-old drug-trafficking leader of the

Montes Bobadilla

Cartel , was arrested this Sunday in a mountainous region of northwestern Honduras, just two weeks after US authorities offered a five million dollar reward to anyone who facilitated her arrest. .

Bobadilla, nicknamed

Chinda

, is considered the leader of one of the most notorious criminal groups in Honduras, and who gave the orders to transport cocaine from Colombia, by sea, air and land, through her country to the United States. 

The woman was located over the weekend by aerial surveillance in the mountainous region of the department of Colón, on the country's north coast, and special forces will be deployed in the area.

The capture occurred, according to the Honduran police in a statement, after an "intense armed confrontation" in which one of his sons, Tito Montes Bobadilla, 32, also known as

Alejandro

or

Pimpi

, died .

[A dozen drug traffickers point to Juan Orlando Hernández as an accomplice in their operations]

In images released by the police, the woman, wearing a flowered shirt and her hair tied up, can be seen handcuffed and led to a car by at least five policemen armed with assault rifles and bulletproof vests.

Two other people were arrested along with Bobadilla.

His other son, Juan Carlos, 35, who was also wanted by the authorities, fled during the police operation. 

By sea, air and land

Earlier this month, the State Department offered a $5 million reward for Bobadilla and each of his two children.

They are accused of leading one of the largest cartels in the country since 2006, according to the US Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia.

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Honduras is a crucial transit state for cocaine to Mexico and the United States, according to US investigators.

Bobadilla allegedly oversaw a drug trafficking network from Colón.

His clan used a fleet of planes, trucks and boats to bring cocaine down the coast from Colombia to Honduras.

He then transported the drug to the Guatemalan border overland in trucks and cars, from where it moved to Mexico and the United States. 

a family business 

According to investigators, the cartel was founded in the 1980s by Pedro García Montes, a Honduran with close ties to the Colombian Cali cartel.

After he was shot dead on a Colombian beach by two hit men in 2004, his business passed to his cousin, Alex Adán Montes, one of Bobadilla's sons.

Alex Adán Montes died of a heart attack while under house arrest in November 2014. His brother Noe Montes then assumed leadership of the clan.

[A jealous narco had baseball player David Ortiz killed when he was shot in 2019, according to an investigator]

Noe, 38 years old and known as

Ton

, was also wanted by US justice.

He was captured and extradited in 2017, and has been serving a 37-year prison sentence in the US since 2019. 

Members of the Honduran Police escort alleged Honduran drug trafficker Herlinda Bobadilla, upon her arrival in Tegucigalpa, on May 15, 2022. STR / AFP via Getty Images

Control of the cartel then passed into the hands of the mother, who was gaining relevance over the years, and her two children, according to the Honduran police.

After the extradition of a former president

Bobadilla's arrest after pressure from the United States may indicate that Honduran President Xiomara Castro is taking action against a drug trafficking network in which US prosecutors say former President Juan Orlando Hernández was involved, analysts told the Vice website. 

Hernández was extradited to the US last month to stand trial on drug charges in New York, after years of accusations that he and his administration aided and abetted criminal groups.

His brother Antonio Hernández was convicted in March 2021 of drug trafficking and sentenced to life in prison in the United States.

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“There was a lot of information available about the structure [of the network] that made it easy to grab them,” Douglas Farah, head of security research firm IBI Consultants, told Vice.

[“I thought Los Zetas were going to kill me.”

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Even so, this analyst warns that Boadilla's arrest does not mean that drug trafficking in the region will be reduced.

"I think they're clearing the house of anything related to Juan Orlando Hernandez and his structures to get rid of his money flow and make sure he can't keep paying people," Farah said.

"The question for me is who will benefit from this," he added.

Source: telemundo

All news articles on 2022-05-16

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