MEXICO CITY — The United States released Damaso López Serrano, the
Mini-lic
, the drug trafficker who turned himself in to California authorities in 2017 and who is wanted in Mexico as the alleged mastermind of the murder that same year of Sinaloan journalist Javier Valdez .
According to the website of the United States Federal Bureau of Prisons, López was released from prison on Friday, September 16.
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The Mexican prosecutor's office said in a statement on Saturday night that the Justice Department had "verbally" informed him that López "continues to be prosecuted for other crimes" in the United States.
The prosecution said it will insist on the extradition of Mini-lic.
López, who will apparently now follow these processes in freedom, is the son of the imprisoned capo of the same name, belonging to the Sinaloa Cartel.
Mexican journalist Javier Valdez in Mexico City, on October 5, 2016. Alex Cruz / EFE
He turned himself in in July 2017 to US Customs and Border Protection agents in Calexico, California, the state where he was facing narcotics-related charges.
In January 2020, the Mexican Attorney General's Office issued an arrest warrant against him for his alleged connection to the murder of journalist Valdez, one of the founders of the Sinaloa weekly Ríodoce, which specializes in covering drug trafficking.
López allegedly disliked the articles by Valdez, who was awarded prizes by various media organizations and shot to death in broad daylight in the state capital in May 2017. According to Mexican prosecutors, López ordered his assassination.
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After the capture in 2016 of Joaquín
El Chapo
Guzmán, one of the heads of the Sinaloa Cartel and currently imprisoned in the United States, a confrontation broke out between the sons of Guzmán and López for control of that criminal group and it is believed that this It was one of the reasons why he turned himself in to the US authorities, supposedly to collaborate with justice.
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Griselda Triana, widow of Javier Valdez, showed her outrage on Facebook where she lamented that the person who, according to her, paid $5,000 to kill her husband now collaborates with the US government.
“The United States protects the murderers of journalists!
Let's not allow it! ”, she wrote.
Two people have been convicted as material authors of Valdez's murder.
His death shocked the Mexican journalistic sector affected by the violence.
In 2022, 15 journalists have been killed in Mexico, the most dangerous country for the press in the entire hemisphere.