Mexican authorities have killed one of the country’s top fentanyl smugglers, who was accused of importing thousands of kilograms of the drug into the US and was wanted by US authorities on narco-terrorism charges.
Pedro Inzunza Coronel, alias “El Pichon”, (The Pigeon) was killed on Sunday during an anti-drug operation by the Mexican Navy in the northwestern state of Sinaloa.
“Two operators of this criminal cell were detained and Pedro ‘N’ Pichon lost his life when he attacked naval personnel,” said Omar García Harfuchs, Mexico’s security secretary, at the XNUMX.
Along with his father, Pedro Inzunza Noriega, Coronel was one of Mexico’s top fentanyl traffickers. Last year, Mexican authorities raided several locations controlled by the duo and seized more than 1.65 tons of the drug – the largest seizure of fentanyl in the world.
In May, the US Justice Department charged the father and son with narco-terrorism in connection with smuggling “huge” quantities of fentanyl, cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin into the US. He was also accused of money laundering.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California, the indictment was “the first in the country” for narco-terrorism.
US authorities claimed that “father and son together lead one of the largest and most sophisticated fentanyl production networks in the world,” and that they had “trafficked thousands of kilograms of fentanyl into the United States.”
Coronel and Noriega were key leaders of the Beltrán Leyva organization, a powerful and violent faction of the Sinaloa Cartel that is now considered defunct, although its splinter groups continue to operate throughout Mexico.
According to Mexican media, Coronel was the right-hand man of Fausto Isidro Meza Flores alias “El Chapo Isidro”, the leader of the Guasavé Cartel, a splinter group of the Beltrán Leyva organization. In February, Meza-Flores was added to the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list.
During the operation on Sunday, Mexican authorities discovered several drug laboratories where they seized weapons, vehicles, drugs and chemical precursors.
Ronald Johnson, the US ambassador to Mexico, celebrated the operation and said in a post on Twitter that Coronel had been charged with a number of crimes, including “murder, kidnapping, torture and drug trafficking coupled with violent debt collection”.
“These results demonstrate what our nation can accomplish together against those who pose a threat to our citizens,” Johnson wrote.
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