The Mexican government has asked the United States to extradite a senior drug cartel figure suspected of murdering prominent journalist Javier Valdez in 2017.
Valdez is known for his award-winning reporting on the drug trade, was shot May 2017 in the city of Culiacan.
Mexican authorities said the assassination of the journalist was ordered by Damaso Lopez Serrano, a former senior member of the Sinaloa drug cartel.
López Serrano – nicknamed “Mini Lic” by the U.S. Department of Justice – was arrested in Virginia on December 13 on fentanyl trafficking charges.
At a press conference this week, Mexico’s Attorney General Alejandro Getz said López Serrano was the “mastermind” of Valdez’s killing.
“We have prosecuted the remaining perpetrators and they are all behind bars,” he said.
Goetz added that Mexico had requested his extradition “numerous times” but had been denied because U.S. authorities considered Lopez Serrano a “protected witness” who “provided them with a wealth of information.”
Investigators believe López Serrano ordered Valdez’s killing after becoming angry over journalists’ coverage of power struggles within the Sinaloa drug cartel.
López Serrano’s father, Damaso López Nunez, is considered an important deputy to drug cartel leader Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzman.
After Guzman was arrested and extradited to the United States, Lopez Nunez launched a bloody power struggle for control of the drug cartel but was eventually captured in a 2017 raid in Mexico City.
In July 2017, Lopez Serrano surrendered to U.S. authorities to face drug trafficking charges and cooperated in exchange for a reduced sentence.
At the time, U.S. law enforcement officials described him as “the highest-level Mexican drug cartel leader” to “surrender” in the United States.
He will be released on parole in 2022.
At the time of his death, Valdez had been reporting on the bloody power struggle within the Sinaloa cartel, which pitted Lopez Nunez and Lopez Serrano against Guzman’s sons.
Eight days before his death, he published a column describing Lopez Serrano as spoiled, “good for conversation but not good for business” and a “weekend gunman with a pistol.”
Mexico is one of the worst countries in the world for violence against journalists.
According to Reporters Without Borders, more than 150 journalists have been killed there since 1994.
At least 15 people were killed in 2022, making it one of the most violent years ever for journalists in Mexico.
Violence continues. In October, a journalist was shot dead in the violence-ridden city of Uruapan.
The next day, an entertainment journalist was shot dead inside a restaurant she owned in Colima state.