Capture of the interview "Boss of bosses" of Telemundo.Telemundo
A judge has rejected the request of the former Mexican drug boss, Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, to reduce his sentence.
The first great capo in the history of drug trafficking, imprisoned since 1989, is serving two sentences in prison that add up to almost the same age as he is: 76 years old.
Sentenced for the brutal murder in 1985 of the infiltrated agent of the United States Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), Enrique
Kiki
Camarena, and for organized crime, the father of all current drug traffickers sought to obtain the leniency of the authorities to go free in seven years —he still has 44 to go—, alleging a fragile state of health.
But the great strategist of the criminal drug empire has lost his last battle.
Félix Gallardo's lawyers have been pursuing for years a privilege similar to that obtained by another of the cartel leaders, also accused of Camarena's murder, Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, better known as
Don Neto,
who obtained house arrest in 2017
.
Félix Gallardo, Don Neto and Rafael Caro Quintero were the three leaders of the most powerful criminal organization of the 1980s and 1990s, the Guadalajara cartel, who were convicted of the agent's murder.
Of the three, the only one who remains behind bars is Félix Gallardo.
Caro Quintero was released in 2013 due to a formal defect in a sentence and while the judges resolved, he escaped.
The capo, who gave an interview to Telemundo showing his ailments - blind in one eye, deaf and in a wheelchair -, wanted the years he has spent in prison (33) to serve him to purge two sentences in one and in this way go free in 2029, for the seven years that remained of the first.
The judge has rejected this option and has indicated, according to the local press, that after the 40-year sentence that continues for drug trafficking and firearms crimes, he must conclude the next one, of 37 more, for the
case .
Camarena
.
Félix Gallardo was arrested in April 1989 in a luxurious house in Cosmos (Guadalajara).
The persecution and capture of his main partners, Caro Quintero and Don Neto, after the fury of the DEA for the kidnapping, torture and murder of Kiki Camarena cornered his leader and blew up the old criminal board.
"This concluded the single cartel model with which the drug trafficking industry began in the country," journalist Diego Enrique Osorno wrote in a report in this newspaper.
In the television interview he denied any connection to organized crime and his testimony seemed to cling to that of an old man, tired and sick, who does not understand why he has been in prison for 32 years.
What happened in 1985 has already occupied the front pages and has inspired Netflix books and scripts, but it is still the origin of current decisions, such as the reward that the DEA offered last year of 20 million dollars for the whereabouts of Caro Quintero, the higher for a criminal.
Camarena was an American agent who, infiltrated the Guadalajara Cartel, dismantled a gigantic marijuana plantation, located in the so-called Buffalo ranch.
The official version indicates that, in retaliation, the drug traffickers murdered him and the pilot with whom he inspected the drug crops, Alfredo Zavala.
Their bodies appeared, a month after being kidnapped, in a ditch 150 kilometers from Guadalajara.
Reports revealed that they had been savagely tortured.
It is not the first time that a judge has rejected the review of his sentence.
In March of this year, the Supreme Court dismissed another appeal in this regard.
And before, a federal court refused to grant another protection to the narco because he had required the return of assets seized after his capture.
Félix Gallardo must pay compensation of almost 21 million Mexican pesos (just over a million dollars) to the family of Camarena and Zavala, murdered together in 1985.
There is still an option for Felix Gallardo.
The possibility that his case will be accepted in the amnesty decreed by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador for elderly prisoners and for health reasons.
A judge must assess whether, despite the high-impact crimes attributed to him, he deserves to complete the rest of his sentence in his house.
Last December, the director of the Jalisco prisons —the state where the Puente Grande prison is located, where he is serving his sentence— indicated that the capo should continue his sentence in house arrest.
"Due to irreversible illnesses, such as the loss of an eye, the loss of an ear, gastrointestinal aspects... In strict accordance with the law, he should be in a home shelter," said José Antonio Pérez Juárez during the presentation of an annual report of activities.
And he came to speak well of his behavior: "Never during his internment did he have a fight."
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