Mexico seeks extradition of El Chapo’s godson who is wanted for the 2017 murder of an award-winning journalist after he voluntarily turned himself over to the DEA because he feared the jailed drug lord’s sons were going to kill him
- Dámaso ‘El Mini Lic’ López Serrano is accused of orchestrating the May 2017 assassination of Javier Valdez, a journalist, in Culiacán, Mexico
- Mexico’s Attorney General’s office was received a court-issued warrant for El Mini Lic’s arrest on Thursday
- However, López Serrano is in custody of the United States after he voluntarily turned himself over to the Drug Enforcement Agency in July 2017
- El Mini Lic did so because he feared he was going to be killed by the sons of his godfather, Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán
Mexico is seeking the extradition of Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán’s godson from the US – who is wanted for the 2017 murder of an award-winning journalist.
Dámaso ‘El Mini Lic’ López had voluntarily turned himself over to the DEA in 2017 over fears that the jailed drug lord’s sons were trying to kill him.
Now, Mexico’s attorney general’s office has formally accused López Serrano of the murder of journalist Javier Valdez in May 2017 and on Thursday issued a warrant for his arrest. They are seeking his extradition from the US to face murder charges.
Prosecutors have interviewed members of the Sinaloa cartel who testified against him, the attorney general’s office said in a statement.
Valdez, a crime reporter who co-founded Mexican weekly newspaper Río Doce, was gunned down May 15, 2017, as he was leaving the weekly publication’s office in the northwestern city of Culiacán.
Mexico’s attorney general’s office received an arrest warrant for Dámaso ‘El Mini Lic’ López Serrano, the alleged mastermind who carried out the May 2017 assassination of Javier Valdez, an award-winning journalist, outside the office of Rio Doce, a weekly paper in Culiacán
Javier Valdez was an expert of Mexico’s multibillion-dollar drug trafficking business
Three other members of the Sinaloa cartel, identified the by attorney general’s office as Juan Francisco, Heriberto and Luis Idelfonso, have been implicated in the killing.
A spokesperson for the prosecutor’s office told DailyMail.com on Friday that one of the three suspects died while in jail. Details of the defendant’s cause of death was not revealed.
Valdez, a respected crime reporter and expert on Mexico’s multibillion dollar drug trafficking industry, published an article shortly before his death in which El Mini Lic was referred to as ‘Sir Nobody.’
Javier Valdez (pictured) wrote an article that referred to Dámaso ‘El Mini Lic’ López Serrano as ‘Sir Nobody’ two months before El Mini Lic allegedly directed the journalist’s May 2017 assassination
El Mini Lic (right) turned himself over to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in July 2017, two months after he carried out the assassination of award-winning journalist Javier Valdez. El Mini Lic is El Chapo’s son and feared the drug lord’s sons were going to reportedly kill him
El Mini Lic turned himself in to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in July 2017 and together with his father and former top “El Chapo” lieutenant Dámaso ‘El Licenciado’ López Nunez cooperated with U.S. authorities in exchange for reduced sentences.
El Chapo’s arrest in January 2016 triggered a war for control of the Sinaloa cartel, pitting two of his sons against another faction led by El Licenciado.
Fearing that El Chapo’s sons were out to get him, El Mini Lic gave himself up to the DEA.
El Licenciado, who was a former prison director who once helped El Chapo escape from jail and then joined forces with him, was arrested in Mexico City in May 2017 and extradited to the United State the next year on drug charges.
Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán, co-founder of the Sinaloa Cartel, is jailed in the United States
Fearing that El Chapo’s sons were out to get him, El Mini Lic (pictured) gave himself up to the DEA
Valdez was 50-year-old when he was executed. The married married father-of-one was a recipient of the 2011 Maria Moors Cabot award for outstanding reporting in Latin America and the Caribbean awarded by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
He was also a contributor to the AFP.
‘Where I work, Culiacán, in the state of Sinaloa, Mexico, it is dangerous to be alive, and practicing journalism is to walk on an invisible line drawn by the bad guys – who are in drug trafficking and government – in a field planted with explosives ‘, said during a September 2011 ceremony at the Waldorf Astoria in New York
‘This is what most of the country lives. You must protect yourself from everything and everyone, and there seems to be no options or salvation, and often there is no one to turn to.’
Mexican journalist Javier Valdez was an AFP stringer and co-founder of the weekly Riodoce de Sinaloa