One of the needed drug kingpins in South America, Sebastian Enrique Marset Cabrera, has been arrested in Santa Cruz de la Sierra in Bolivia, after a morning raid involving a whole bunch of law enforcement officials.
Following Marset’s seize on Friday, Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz celebrated the arrest as a milestone within the combat in opposition to drug trafficking on the continent.
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“One of many drug traffickers and criminals thought-about among the many 4 largest on the continent has fallen,” Paz stated throughout a information convention in La Paz, Bolivia.
“The seize of Mr Marset marks a turning level within the combat in opposition to organised crime, and it additionally reaffirms the federal government’s dedication to confront worldwide and home mafias.”
Paz’s management is a part of a development in South America, which has seen longtime left-leaning governments flounder in current elections, in favour of right-wing alternate options.
Marset’s arrest additionally coincides with a renewed push from the USA to extra aggressively handle drug trafficking throughout the Western Hemisphere.
Paz’s nascent authorities has demonstrated a willingness to accomplice with the US on these efforts.
Paz was sworn into workplace in November, ending practically 20 years of management from Bolivia’s Motion for Socialism (MAS), and in late February, his authorities reinstated ties with the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) after a rupture in 2008.
US President Donald Trump not too long ago hosted Paz and different right-wing leaders from Latin America at his Mar-a-Lago resort in South Florida to debate shared efforts to fight drug cartels and different prison networks.
One among Trump’s high advisers, Stephen Miller, reiterated the president’s hardline stance that drug traffickers shouldn’t be handled as criminals, however as illegal combatants in an armed battle.
“The cartels that function on this hemisphere are the ISIS [ISIL] and the al-Qaeda of the Western Hemisphere and must be handled simply as brutally and simply as ruthlessly as we deal with these organisations,” Miller stated.
“We now have realized after a long time of effort is that there’s not a prison justice answer to the cartel drawback.”
After his arrest on Friday, Marset was transferred into US custody, and he was seen boarding a US-tagged aircraft.
The DEA didn’t take part in his seize, which was led by native legislation enforcement. No accidents or deaths had been reported after the operation.
Who’s Marset?
The DEA thought-about Marset, a 34-year-old Uruguayan citizen, to be “certainly one of South America’s most infamous drug traffickers”.
On March 7, 2024, he was indicted on cash laundering prices, for allegedly utilizing US-based monetary establishments to course of tens of millions in drug-trafficking proceeds.
The indictment additionally accused Marset of main a transnational prison group, the First Uruguayan Cartel, accountable for delivery cocaine internationally, together with to locations similar to Belgium and Portugal.
One drug bust within the Belgian port of Antwerp turned up practically 16 tonnes of cocaine linked to Marset’s prison community.
Prosecutors have additionally alleged that Marset solicited recommendation about disposing of the our bodies of his enemies over textual content messages.
Each Paraguay and Bolivia had additionally sought to detain Marset on prison prices. In 2023, Bolivia, for example, posted a $100,000 reward for info resulting in his seize.
The US, in the meantime, provided a $2m bounty in Could of final 12 months for assist arresting or convicting him.
Marset appeared to relish his status as certainly one of South America’s “most needed” prison suspects. The Washington Submit reported that he stamped his drug shipments with the label, “The King of the South”.
Media stories additionally indicated that Marset was a diehard soccer fan, investing in lower-level sports activities groups in Latin America and Europe. He had been on the run since July 2023, forward of a deliberate operation on the time to detain him.
In 2021, he was briefly stopped in Dubai, within the United Arab Emirates, for travelling underneath a faux passport. However Uruguayan authorities finally issued him new journey paperwork that allowed him to depart the nation, prompting outcry.
Since his arrest on Friday, Paraguay has stated it too would search Marset’s extradition so he may stand trial within the nation.
Marset’s arrest follows one other main operation final month in Mexico to seize the drug kingpin Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, often called “El Mencho”, a pacesetter of the Jalisco New Era Cartel.
That operation, nevertheless, resulted in El Mencho’s dying and a wave of retaliatory assaults throughout Mexico.
