Mexico president defends release of El Chapo’s son
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Mexico’s president Andrés Manuel López Obrador approved the release of a son of jailed drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán on Thursday, after security forces were overwhelmed by the firepower of the Sinaloa Cartel during a bungled raid to capture him.
FT reports that Obrador told reporters security forces had tried to capture Ovidio Guzmán, a 28-year-old son of the jailed cartel boss nicknamed “The Mouse”, at a house in the Sinaloa state capital on Thursday afternoon, acting on an extradition request from the US.
Obrado insisted that his government was right to release one of the sons of imprisoned drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, a day after his brief capture by the army sparked a wave of attacks by cartel gunmen who took soldiers hostage and paralyzed the northern city of Culiacán.
“This decision was taken to protect citizens. You cannot fight fire with fire,” López Obrador said in his daily press conference on Friday morning. “We do not want deaths. We do not want war.”
But the aborted arrest – and the chaos that it unleashed – prompted accusations that the government had simply folded in the face of cartel firepower, and cast further doubt on the president’s efforts to overhaul Mexico’s security strategy.
