Mexico: 14 dead as military chopper escorting aircraft carrying arrested drug lord crashes

At least 14 people were killed on Friday after a Mexican Navy helicopter crashed in Mexico's Sinaloa while escorting an aircraft carrying an arrested drug lord, news agency ANI reported, citing officials of the Mexican Navy. 

Although the cause of the crash is not yet known, 14 of the 15 people travelling in a Black Hawk helicopter died in the crash, while the lone survivor is receiving medical treatment.

Notably, the Black Hawk helicopter, owned by the Navy, was escorting another aircraft carrying infamous drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero. The founder of the Guadalajara Cartel was arrested earlier in the day in the northern state of Sinaloa.

Soon after the crash, the Mexican Navy stated that as of now, there is no information linking the plane crash to the arrest of the alleged drug trafficker.

Who is Rafael Caro Quintero?

Rafael Caro Quintero is a Mexican drug lord who co-founded the now-disintegrated Guadalajara Cartel with Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo and other drug traffickers in the late 1970s. 

Interestingly, the United States is after Caro Quintero and is seeking to extradite him for the murder of Enrique Camarena Salazar, an agent of the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in 1985. The Mexican drug lord was captured nearly a decade after walking out of the country's prison and returning to the business of drug trafficking.

Caro Quintero spent around 28 years in prison and walked free in the year 2013 when a court overturned his 40-year sentence for the 1985 kidnapping and killing of US Drug Enforcement Administration agent Enrique Camarena. The brutal murder of the US DEA agent was responsible for hampering US-Mexico relations at the time.

(With inputs from ANI)