MEXICO CITY (AP) — Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, one of Mexico's most feared drug lords, has been released from a U.S. prison after serving most of his 25-year sentence, authorities confirmed Friday.
A U.S. Bureau of Prisons official said Cárdenas Guillén had been released from prison and taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which normally would have meant he would be deported back to Mexico.
A Mexican official who asked not to be named said there are two arrest warrants out for Cárdenas Guillén in Mexico, and there is a good chance he will be arrested upon arrival.
The former leader of the Gulf Cartel was known for his brutality. He created the most bloodthirsty gang of hitmen Mexico has ever known, the Zetas, who routinely slaughtered migrants and innocent people.
Cárdenas Guillén was sentenced to 25 years in prison and ordered to forfeit tens of millions of dollars in 2010. It is unclear why he did not serve his full sentence, but he was extradited to the U.S. in January 2007.
The 57-year-old resident of the Mexican border city of Matamoros smuggled tons of cocaine and made millions of dollars through the Gulf Cartel, based in the border cities of Reynosa and Matamoros.
He created the Zetas, a gang of former Mexican special forces soldiers whom he recruited to become his private army and assassination squad. They committed acts of terror, regularly slaughtering dozens of people, beheading them or dumping piles of dismembered bodies on the road.
The Zetas continued to exist long after Cárdenas Guillén was captured in 2003. By 2010, the Zetas had formed their own cartel and carried out terrorist attacks across Mexico, as far south as Tabasco, until their top leaders were killed or arrested in 2012–13.
A Zetas offshoot, the Northeast Cartel, still controls the border city of Nuevo Laredo, across from Laredo, Texas.
But Cárdenas Guillén's own gang, the Gulf Cartel, has become hopelessly divided after more than a decade of bloody infighting between factions with names like The Metros, The Cyclones, The Reds and The Scorpions.
Cárdenas Guillén's nickname was “El Mata Amigos,” or “The One Who Kills His Friends.”
Cárdenas Guillén's most brazen act came in 1999 when he surrounded and stopped a vehicle carrying two U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents and one of their informants in the border city of Matamoros, across from Brownsville, Texas.
His gunmen pointed their guns at the agents and demanded that they hand over the informant, who would almost certainly be tortured and killed. The agents persisted and refused, reminding him that killing DEA employees would be a bad decision. Cárdenas Guillén eventually called his gunmen back, but not before reportedly saying, “You gringos, this is my territory.”
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Alanna Durkin Richer contributed from Washington, DC
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