Mexico City:
A Dutch drug trafficking that was one of the most wanted criminals in Europe and reportedly forged his own death was murdered in Mexico, an official said Friday.
Marco Ebben, 32, was shot on Thursday in Atizapan de Zaragoza, a municipality about 25 kilometers (15 miles) from the capital Mexico City.
Experts confirmed the identity of Ebben, an officer at the office of the public prosecutor told AFP and asked for not to be mentioned because they were not authorized to talk about the case.
European legislative enforcement agency Europol mentioned Ebben as one of Europe's “most wanted fugitives” for smuggling drugs from Brazil to the Netherlands.
The website says that in October 2020 he was sentenced to more than seven years in prison.
Between 2014 and 2015, Ebben and his henchmen reportedly smuggled 400 kilos of cocaine in containers filled with pineapple, according to Europol.
To avoid the arrest, the Dutchman reportedly falsified his death last October in the Mexican cartel stronghold of Culiacan in the midst of a peat war between two factions of the Sinaloa cartel.
According to local media, Ebben was accused of ties with one of the factions, but no evidence of his death was found at the time, except for a statement from an alleged girlfriend who claimed to have recognized the body.
The violence in Sinaloa follows the surprise judgment on the American soil of cartel co-founder Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada at the end of July, which it is believed to have unleashed an internal power struggle.
The Mexican authorities said on Friday that they had arrested a suspected drug trafficking in Sinaloa Cartel Active in the northern state of Chihuahua who was sought by the United States. Local media identified him as Humberto Rivera, aka “El Chato”, “El Don” or “El Viejon.”
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