The Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, denied this Friday that the United States had participated in the arrest of Ovidio Guzmán, one of the sons of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán most wanted by the US, and that the capture is related to Joe Biden’s visit.
“No (the US participated), I already explained. It is a decision that is made and it is routine. The most important thing in our strategy is to prevent people from having to engage in crime, ”he said in his daily conference, questioned about the participation of US agencies.
Ovidio Guzmán was arrested at dawn last Thursday in Sinaloa after an operation by the Mexican Armed Forces, which resulted in almost thirty deaths, of which a dozen were military and 19 members of organized crime.
“We act autonomously, independently, there is cooperation and there will continue to be, but we make the decisions as a sovereign, independent government, and we make these decisions in the security cabinet,” the president emphasized.
The arrest was surprising as it occurred days before US President Joe Biden’s visit to Mexico on the occasion of the North American Leaders Summit, which opened the door to speculation about the possibility that the arrest of the drug trafficker is directly related to said event.
“About the interpretations, there are many, we respect them, of course we do not share them because we act autonomously,” López Obrador commented in this regard.
From the opposition there was also speculation about the collusion of the Executive with organized crime, before which it defended that the operation was carried out with “righteousness and integrity.”
“They can invent whatever they want,” he said.
Ovidio Guzmán was transferred during the day on Thursday to the Mexican capital and later entered the Federal Center for Social Readaptation (Cefereso) number 1 Altiplano -also known as the Almoloya prison-, located in the State of Mexico, where his father was detained and from whom he escaped in 2015.
The Mexican government has acknowledged that there is an extradition request in the United States, which in December 2021 offered $5 million for information for his capture, but has warned that he will not be extradited in a hurry.
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