Notorious former drug cartel leader nicknamed ‘the buddy killer’ released from US prison 21 years after his arrest

Mexican drug lord Osiel Cardenas Guillen, former leader of the notorious Gulf Cartel and the Los Zetas criminal gang, was released from a U.S. prison on Friday and turned over to the U.S. Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, authorities said.

Cardenas Guillen was arrested in 2003 and extradited to the United States four years later, where he pleaded guilty to drug trafficking, money laundering and racketeering. A Federal Bureau of Prisons official told AFP that Cardenas Guillen, 57, was released on Friday and was taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Osiel Cardenas Guillen, 39, accused of being a Mexican drug lord, walks out of federal court after pleading not guilty to charges related to running a cartel, in Houston, Feb. 9, 2007. Pat Sullivan/AP

He faces multiple charges in Mexico, but it is not yet clear whether the U.S. government will deport him. An anonymous U.S. official told NBC News that the Biden administration is planning to transfer Cardenas Guillen to Mexico.

The Gulf Cartel was once one of Mexico’s most fearsome criminal organizations, but in recent years the cartel has lost influence and split into several factions.

As leader of the cartel, Cardenas Guillen ran a drug trafficking empire responsible for exporting massive quantities of cocaine and marijuana from Mexico to the United States.

He was nicknamed “El Mata Amigos” (“Killer of Friends”) and recruited former Mexican special forces soldiers to form his personal guard. This guard eventually operated alone as Los Zetas, one of the country’s bloodiest gangs until its collapse.

After his arrest in the northeastern border state of Tamaulipas, he was extradited to the United States in 2007, where he was sentenced in 2010 to 25 years in prison and a $50 million fine.

The Justice Department alleged at the time that Cardenas Guillen threatened to kill a Texas sheriff’s deputy who was working as an undercover ICE agent after he refused to deliver nearly 2,200 pounds of marijuana.

After his arrest, the Zetas began to operate more independently, until they finally broke with the Gulf Cartel in 2010, leading to a war for control of drug trafficking routes in eastern and northeastern Mexico.

Gulf Cartel Faction Behind US Murders in 2023

In January, Mexican marines arrested a top leader of the Gulf Cartel, the gang that kidnapped four Americans and killed two in March 2023. The kidnapping and killing of the Americans was linked to the Gulf Cartel faction known as “The Scorpions.”

The four Americans arrived in Matamoros, a border city in Texas, in March so that one of them could undergo cosmetic surgery. They were shot in downtown Matamoros and then herded into a van.

Americans Zindell Brown and Shaeed Woodard were killed in the attack. Eric Williams and Latavia McGee survived. A Mexican woman, Areli Pablo Servando, 33, was also killed, apparently by a stray bullet.

In an April 2023 interview, Williams said he at one point was lying covered in blood on the floor of a van, hidden beneath the bodies of Woodard and Brown.

In May 2023, police arrested a senior member of the violent Metros faction, a Gulf drug cartel. The suspect was identified as Hugo Salinas Cortinas, whose nickname “La Cabra” means “the goat.”

A few weeks earlier, the brother of Miguel Villarreal, aka “Gringo Mike,” a former Gulf Cartel shopping mall boss, was sentenced in Houston to 180 months in prison for his role in cocaine distribution.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Learn more at CBS News

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