The President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, during his morning conference on November 30, 2022. Isaac Esquivel (EFE)
The whereabouts of La Barbie remain a mystery.
Andrés Manuel López Obrador has acknowledged in his press conference this Wednesday that he has not yet received information from the White House about where Édgar Valdez Villarreal is, one of the bloodiest drug traffickers in the history of Mexico.
"This is strange that is happening in the United States with Mr. Villarreal, who is not in the prisoner registry and we want to know where he is," commented the president, after it was revealed this week that he does not appear in the prisoner search engine in the US, where the kingpin is serving a sentence until 2056. The president has demanded transparency from Washington and has insisted that it clarify the situation.
"You don't have to leave because the sentence is for many years, only that there is an agreement,"
The possibility that Valdez Villarreal has signed an agreement with the US authorities has gained strength in light of the case in New York against Genaro García Luna, Secretary of Public Security in the Government of Felipe Calderón (2006-2012).
The start of the trial of the former head of the Mexican Police for links to drug trafficking is scheduled for January of next year.
La Barbie was arrested in August 2010 in Lerma, on the outskirts of Mexico City, during the administration of García Luna and in the last 12 years he has launched several accusations about the links of the Calderón government with organized crime.
"I know that he has received money from me, from drug trafficking and organized crime," said the capo in a letter he wrote while imprisoned in Mexico in 2012. Still,
"If the agreement is reached, in any case, we would have to act if there are complaints in Mexico," said López Obrador.
"The US government has to clear it up as soon as possible," he added.
The president had said in his conference on Tuesday that he had asked the Secretary of Security and the Secretary of Foreign Affairs to investigate what had happened and he trusted that Washington would report "in the next few hours" on the whereabouts of the capo.
"From La Barbie I still do not have confirmation that he has been released, that is, he is still in custody," declared Marcelo Ebrard, the head of Foreign Affairs, hours later.
"There are several reasons why a prisoner may appear as 'not in the custody of the Prison Agency," a spokesman for the US prison agency responded to EL PAÍS.
“Inmates who were previously in the custody of the Bureau of Prisons and who have not served their sentence may be out of custody for a period of time to attend court hearings, medical treatment or for other reasons,” he added.
“We do not give specific information about the status of prisoners who are not in Bureau of Prisons custody for security or privacy reasons,” he concluded.
Until the unknown about his whereabouts, Valdez Villarreal has been serving a sentence in the high security prison of Coleman II, in the central region of Florida.
Consulted by this newspaper, one of his lawyers in the United States said that he was not aware of where his client was and that he had no comment.
La Barbie was sentenced in 2018 to 49 years in prison for four charges of drug trafficking and another for money laundering.
López Obrador has questioned whether the name of Valdez Villarreal, a kingpin off the crime scene for more than a decade, was in the news again this week.
“Who is checking the list of millions of prisoners?
Well nobody, this was a leak.
With what purpose?
That is what you need to know”, the president pointed out.
The president's statements have revealed between the lines that his government is not satisfied with the possibility that the United States sought an agreement with La Barbie, a former member of the Sinaloa Cartel and the Beltrán Leyva Cartel, without consulting Mexico.
The president said that there is an arrest warrant in force in Mexico against the capo.
Since the beginning of 2022, Washington pushed the López Obrador Administration to increase the number of extraditions per year, until reaching a goal of 60 transfers from Mexico to the United States, according to EL PAÍS based on the massive leak of emails from the Secretary of National Defense.
About La Barbie there is still nothing confirmed, beyond speculation.
The deck of possibilities to justify the absence of it from US prison records ranges from the most grandiose (a collaboration agreement or an early release) to the merely routine (a medical consultation).
Where is the Barbie?
“There is no precision on the subject, but we are going to continue asking them to inform us,” said López Obrador.
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