EL CENTRO, Calif. – A convicted drug trafficker implicated in the 1985 torture and killing of a DEA agent has been arrested and returned to California on a probation violation.
The San Diego Union-Tribune says 77-year-old Ezequiel Godinez-Cervantes was arrested Wednesday in Mexicali, Mexico, handed over to U.S. authorities and arraigned Thursday in federal court in El Centro. It's unclear whether he has a lawyer.
The probation violation stems from a decades-old California conviction for prison escape.
Witnesses implicated Godinez in the kidnapping, torture and killing of DEA agent Enrique Camarena and his pilot in Mexico. However, he was never charged in those deaths.
Godinez was accused of the 1985 deaths of two U.S. residents who were stabbed and beaten in a restaurant in Guadalajara. But the charges were later dropped.
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