A high-ranking honcho and assassin for El Chapo’s Sinaloa drug cartel has been shipped to the US to face drug, gun and conspiracy charges, federal officials said.
Nestor Isidro Perez Salas, a vicious sicario known as “El Nini,” was a leading figure in the international narcotrafficking operation once run by Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman and his family before he was picked by Mexican authorities last year and held for extradition.
“We allege El Nini was one of the Sinaloa Cartel’s lead sicarios, or assassins, and was responsible for the murder, torture, and kidnapping of rivals and witnesses who threatened the cartel’s criminal drug trafficking enterprise,” US Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.
“We also allege El Nini was a part of the Sinaloa Cartel’s production and sale of fentanyl, including in the United States,” Garland said. “El Nini joins the growing list of cartel leaders and associates indicted in, and extradited to, the United States.”
According to the feds, Perez Salas served as security chief for Guzman until he was jailed and extradited to the US. What’s left of the cartel is run by “Los Chapitos,” or Guzman’s sons and other relatives.
Perez Salas was also heavily involved in shipping fentanyl and other drugs into the country.
Guzman, who was extradited to the US in 2017, is now serving a life sentence at the ADX Florence Supermax prison in Colorado — periodically griping about conditions there through his lawyers.
The drug kingpin was once one of the most powerful narcotraffickers in the world and boasted about killing as many as 3,000 people during his reign of terror atop the country’s illicit drug trade.
He was first captured and jailed by Mexican authorities in 2015 but managed to tunnel out to freedom — only to be recaptured the following year before his extradition and life sentence in the US.
