“Ivan” for Borderland Beat
On Thursday, the 16th, a dozen Colombian National Police agents approached two Mexicans at Bogota’s El Dorado International Airport; they discreetly surrounded them, asked them to identify themselves, and told them they were under arrest.
According to Proceso, both had arrest warrants for extradition to the United States and, according to the Colombian police, are members of the Sinaloa Cartel and “trusted men” of Ovidio Guzmán López, son of Joaquín el Chapo Guzmán, who was captured on January 5 in the town of Jesús María, municipality of Culiacán.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has identified him as a large-scale producer of fentanyl and, together with his half-brothers Iván Archivaldo and Jesús Alfredo, he heads the Los Chapitos faction of the Sinaloa Cartel.
The two Mexicans arrested in Bogota were surprised. They had arrived in the Colombian capital on a flight from Mexico City and passed through immigration control without any problem, where they said they had come for tourism. However, when they crossed the international arrivals gate at El Dorado, they were stopped by the police.
The most striking thing about these captures, which were reported by the police in a very terse manner to the press six days later, is that the two Mexicans were captured on charges of trafficking fentanyl, the synthetic opiate that is causing a health catastrophe in the United States. Last year alone, overdoses with this drug caused the death of at least 70,000 Americans, one every eight minutes on average.
This is the first time that arrests related to fentanyl trafficking have been made in Colombia, although, according to the indictment of the federal court of the Southern District of New York against the two Mexicans, the crime was not committed in Colombian territory, but derives from a shipment of 400 grams of this drug that was produced in Mexico and illegally introduced into the United States.
The detainees were identified as Carlos Félix Gutiérrez and Silvano Francisco Mariano.
Proceso learned that both have their residence in Culiacán, Sinaloa, although they are originally from other states. According to Colombian police sources, they are specialists in processing fentanyl and “know the logistics” of this illegal business very well.
According to the Director of Criminal Investigation and Interpol (Dijin) of the police, General Olga Patricia Salazar, the Mexicans arrived in Colombia with the purpose of coordinating actions with local drug traffickers “to make inroads in the production, sale and export of fentanyl”.
Two police agents familiar with the investigation told this weekly that an “inter-agency team” involving the DEA and the FBI and operating in Colombia received the alert from Mexico of the arrival of the two envoys of Los Chapitos.
“They had already arranged meetings in Bogota and Medellin with Colombian contacts to develop the fentanyl production plan,” said one of the agents. In those cities they were looking to set up laboratories to process the synthetic opioid, “cut” it with different mixtures, press it into pills and traffic it to the United States along the cocaine routes through which the drug has flowed for decades.