Mexican drug trafficker arrested in Rio

Drug dealer Jose Diaz Barajas from México was arrested on Monday night (Jun 16) by agents from the Brazilian Federal Police and Interpol at the Rio de Janeiro International Airport. Accompanied by his wife and two children, he was trying to fly to the northeastern city of Fortaleza to watch the game between Brazil and Mexico.

According to the Federal Police, Barajas, who was on Interpol’s wanted list, flew from Mexico to Paraguay carrying genuine documents and crossed the Brazilian border on foot last Wednesday (11), through the city of Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil’s southern end, taking thereafter a domestic flight to Rio de Janeiro, where he planned to board a plane to Ceará. He and his family had tickets for the game to be held at 4 pm on Tuesday (17).

Police Commissioner Luiz Cravo Dórea, coordinator at the Federal Police International Cooperation, the Mexican citizen had been under surveillance ever since he entered the country, in a joint operation by Brazilian, US American and Mexican authorities launched at the International Police Cooperation Center, in Brasília.

“We’ve requested the Federal Supreme Court to issue an arrest warrant [for Barajas], which was done on [June] 14, so we executed it. We had teams in Rio de Janeiro and Fortaleza. We also had copies of the tickets he had bought for the game,” Dórea said. He explained that the drug trafficker, wanted in the US, “trafficked methamphetamine, whose raw materials were received in Asia for production in Mexico. After that it was exported to the US.”

Jose Diaz Barajas will await at a prison in Rio de Janeiro the end of his extradition process, initiated by US American authorities. Brazil’s Interpol chief Luiz Eduardo Navajas explained that the US are the main market for methamphetamine, a synthetic drug, and that the trafficker was wanted by the Drug Enforcement Administration for a few months.

Translated by Fabrício Ferreira