MEXICO CITY — The imprisonment of a cartel member within the U.S. has dashed hopes in Mexico for justice in one of many nation’s most infamous slayings — the dying of acclaimed journalist Javier Valdez, who was gunned down in broad daylight two blocks from his newspaper workplace within the cartel-embattled metropolis of Culiacán.
The brazen assassination in 2017 of Valdez — a tireless chronicler of cartel violence and politicians’ hyperlinks to organized crime — sparked worldwide condemnation. The slaying dramatized the perils confronted by journalists in Mexico, the place scores have been slain in recent times.
Valdez’s assassination stays essentially the most infamous killing of a Mexican journalist in many years.
Whereas two gunmen are serving jail phrases in Mexico, authorities right here have lengthy sought the extradition from the United Stares of the alleged mastermind: Dámaso López Serrano, a former Sinaloa cartel capo and the son of an in depth affiliate of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the imprisoned co-founder of the Sinaloa syndicate.
Mexican authorities and fellow journalists say López Serrano doubtless ordered the hit as a result of the journalist had mocked the younger narco mercilessly in Ríodoce, the weekly co-founded by Valdez.
On Might 8, 2017, Valdez wrote a scathing column dismissing López Serrano as a “junior” party-boy and faux “weekend” pistolero who moved round ostentatiously with 20 bodyguards, “excelled at chit-chat however not enterprise,” and did not fill the sneakers of his father.
One week later, on Might 15, assassins pressured Valdez, 50, from his automotive at noon and shot him no less than a dozen instances in downtown Culiacán, the capital of Sinaloa state. His physique was left on the road amid shell casings; his signature Panama hat was streaked with blood.
López Serrano, a godson of El Chapo, fled inter-mob bloodletting just a few months later and surrendered to U.S. authorities alongside the border in Calexico, California. He later pleaded responsible to trafficking tons of cocaine and different narcotics into america. He was by no means charged in U.S. courts with the homicide of Valdez.
He’s the son of Dámaso López Núñez, the El Chapo confidante often called El Licenciado, or The Lawyer. The son’s mob deal with is Mini Lic. His father and El Chapo are each serving life phrases in U.S. prisons.
López Serrano served solely 5 years in U.S. custody on the trafficking conviction. In keeping with media accounts and Mexican officers, he agreed to change into a cooperating witness for U.S. prosecutors pursuing different traffickers.
López Serrano was launched from federal custody after serving his time period and allowed to stay in america. Nonetheless, the FBI re-arrested him in 2024 in reference to a scheme to distribute fentanyl, the lethal artificial opioid.
On Wednesday, a federal decide in Virginia sentenced López Serrano to 5 years in jail on the fentanyl rap, to be adopted by 5 years of supervised launch.
The brand new sentence dismayed those that hoped López Serrano would quickly be introduced again to Mexico to face trial.
“It’s painful and outrageous to know that the one that ordered Javier’s homicide will proceed avoiding his deserved punishment in Mexico,” Griselda Tirana, the journalist’s widow, wrote on Fb.
She has lengthy been on the forefront of efforts to strain Washington at hand over López Serrano.
However there’s a critical hurdle: U.S. prosecutors have seen López Serrano as too useful a supply on the Mexican underworld to ship him again south, in keeping with Mexico’s former Atty. Gen. Alejandro Gertz Manero, who stated he pressed the extradition demand with counterparts in Washington.
“They stated he was a protected witness of the federal government of america and he was giving them a whole lot of data,” Gertz Manero informed reporters in December 2024, after López Serrano was arrested within the fentanyl scheme. “And, due to that, they couldn’t assist us.”
In Might, journalists, human rights activists and others gathered in entrance of the U.S. Embassy in Mexico Metropolis on the anniversary of Valdez’s killing, demanding that López Serrano be despatched to Mexico to face justice.
That very same month, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum stated Mexican authorities would “insist” on the extradition of López Serrano.
The U.S. Justice Division declined to touch upon the case.
Advocates say they plan to proceed urgent the U.S. authorities, although many lack optimism that Washington will ever relent.
“We’re going to maintain demanding — as we’ve got for the reason that assassination of Javier — that everybody, together with the mastermind of this crime, be punished,” stated Roxana Vivanco, information editor at Ríodoce, Valdez’s former publication. “We hope that, this time round, as soon as he finishes his sentence in america he can be returned to Mexico to be judged for the killing of Javier.”
As casualties mount amongst Mexican media personnel — and their assailants go free — many in Mexico view the case as a litmus check. The central query: Will there ever come a time when justice will prevail — and impunity will recede — in instances of Mexican journalists focused by organized crime, corrupt politicians and others?
Up to now, the Valdez investigation has adopted a distressing sample: Employed trigger-men are despatched to jail, their arrests lauded by Mexican authorities, whereas the “mental authors,” or masterminds, stay free.
“If this, essentially the most high-profile case isn’t solved, then we can not maintain our breaths for resolutions in much less high-profile instances,” stated Jan-Albert Hootsen, Mexican consultant for the Committee to Defend Journalists, a New York-based press advocacy group.
“So this can be a actually, actually vital case,” Hootsen added. “We actually want for this man to be extradited to Mexico finally and stand trial.”
Particular correspondent Cecilia Sánchez Vidal contributed to this report.
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