Mexico president thanks drug lord who praised his policy

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Friday thanked a veteran drug lord jailed for the murder of a US undercover agent, after the incarcerated man praised the leftist leader’s security strategy.

“I thank him very much for his good wishes,” Lopez Obrador said at his daily news conference when asked about the comments of Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo.

The 76-year-old founder of the Guadalajara cartel has been in prison since 1989 for the murder of Enrique “Kiki” Camarena, a US Drug Enforcement Administration agent.

In a rare interview with the Telemundo channel released this week, Felix Gallardo said that Lopez Obrador was slowly resolving the violence gripping the Latin American country.

“The violence is a consequence of unemployment, of social inequality, which Mr Lopez Obrador is solving little by little. You have to give him time,” he said.

Felix Gallardo, who maintained his innocence, appeared in a wheelchair in a high-security prison in western Mexico, saying he was blind in one eye and deaf in one ear.

Lopez Obrador said that the attorney general’s office would review Felix Gallardo’s case to see if he qualifies for a prisoner release scheme announced by the government.

Inmates aged 65 and above with chronic diseases will be among those considered for release.

“I don’t want anyone to suffer. I don’t want anyone to be in jail. I’m a humanist. I’m trained in the school of non-violence,” but “I have to enforce the laws,” Lopez Obrador said.

Felix Gallardo’s criminal organization, powerful in the 1980s, is considered the forefather of modern Mexican drug cartels.

It was one of the first to establish contacts with Colombian drug lords to transport cocaine from the South American country to the United States.

A wave of cartel-related violence has left more than 300,000 people dead in Mexico since the government deployed the military in the war on drugs in 2006.

Agence France-Presse

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