14 suspects linked to powerful Sinaloa cartel arrested in Spain amid kidnapping and murder investigation

Spain has arrested 14 people suspected of links to the powerful Mexican Sinaloa cartel as part of a kidnapping and murder probe, police said Sunday.

The ring busted by Spanish investigators was mainly made up of Mexican nationals. It was connected to the Sinaloa drug cartel, which is based in northwestern Mexico and has been shaken by weeks of gang infighting.

“The dismantled criminal network, which is based in Catalonia, is believed to be involved in the kidnapping and death of a man whose body was found in a wooded area” in the northeastern Spanish region in August, police said in a statement.

The victim, whose nationality was not specified, allegedly worked with the gang and “had come from Italy for a meeting with several chiefs.”

The victim’s family in Kosovo reported his disappearance to the police after he was abducted between late May and June.

The family received a 240,000-euro ransom request ($253,000) and a total of $32,000 was paid in cryptocurrency.

The 14 detained suspects were allegedly involved in drug trafficking, money laundering, kidnapping and murder, the statement also said. The detainees, 11 men and 3 women, are between 30 and 70 years old.

The Catalonia-based ring received shipments from Mexico containing clothes soaked with methamphetamine, which they then extracted in a Spanish lab, police added.

The 14 arrests came just days after Spain arrested one of its top police officers after 20 million euros were found hidden in the walls of his house, as part of a probe into the country’s largest-ever cocaine bust.

The Sinaloa cartel, which is named after the Mexican state where it originated, is one of the largest criminal organizations in the world. Two of its founders, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman and Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada are jailed in the United States.

Zambada, 76, was arrested on July 25 in the southern United States, where he landed with Joaquin Guzman Lopez, one of “El Chapo’s” sons, who led a faction of the cartel known as the “Chapitos.” The veteran drug trafficker has accused Lopez of kidnapping him and handing him over to U.S. law enforcement.

According to an indictment released by the U.S. Justice Department last year, the “Chapitos” and their cartel associates used corkscrews, electrocution and hot chiles to torture their rivals while some of their victims were “fed dead or alive to tigers.” El Chapo’s sons were among 28 Sinaloa cartel members charged in a massive fentanyl-trafficking investigation announced in April 2023.

“El Chapo” is serving a life sentence in a maximum security prison in Colorado after being convicted in 2019 on charges including drug trafficking, money laundering and weapons-related offenses.

Spiraling criminal violence, much of it linked to gang drug trafficking, has seen more than 450,000 people murdered in Mexico since 2006.

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