MEXICO CITY\u00a0\u2014\u00a0The imprisonment of a cartel member in the U.S. has dashed hopes in Mexico for justice in one of the country\u2019s most notorious slayings \u2014 the death of acclaimed journalist Javier Valdez, who was gunned down in broad daylight two blocks from his newspaper office in the cartel-embattled city of Culiac\u00e1n.<\/p>\n
The brazen assassination<\/a> in 2017 of Valdez \u2014 a tireless chronicler of cartel violence and politicians\u2019 links to organized crime \u2014 sparked international condemnation. The slaying dramatized the perils faced by journalists in Mexico, where scores have been slain<\/a> in recent years.<\/p>\n Valdez\u2019s assassination remains the most notorious killing of a Mexican journalist in decades. <\/p>\n While two gunmen are serving prison terms in Mexico, authorities here have long sought the extradition from the United Stares of the alleged mastermind: D\u00e1maso L\u00f3pez Serrano, a former Sinaloa cartel capo and the son of a close associate of Joaqu\u00edn \u201cEl Chapo\u201d Guzm\u00e1n, the imprisoned co-founder of the Sinaloa syndicate.<\/p>\n Mexican authorities and fellow journalists say L\u00f3pez Serrano likely ordered the hit because the journalist had mocked the young narco mercilessly in R\u00edodoce, the weekly co-founded by Valdez. <\/p>\n On May 8, 2017, Valdez wrote a scathing column dismissing L\u00f3pez Serrano as a \u201cjunior\u201d party-boy and fake \u201cweekend\u201d pistolero who moved around ostentatiously with 20 bodyguards, \u201cexcelled at chit-chat but not business,\u201d and failed to fill the shoes of his father.<\/p>\n One week later, on May 15, assassins forced Valdez, 50, from his car at midday and shot him at least a dozen times in downtown Culiac\u00e1n, the capital of Sinaloa state. His body was left on the street amid shell casings; his signature Panama hat was streaked with blood.<\/p>\n L\u00f3pez Serrano, a godson of El Chapo, fled inter-mob bloodletting a few months later and surrendered to U.S. authorities along the border in Calexico, California. He later pleaded guilty to trafficking tons of cocaine and other narcotics into the United States. He was never charged in U.S. courts with the murder of Valdez. <\/p>\n He is the son of D\u00e1maso L\u00f3pez N\u00fa\u00f1ez, the El Chapo confidante known as El Licenciado, or The Lawyer. The son\u2019s mob handle is Mini Lic. His father and El Chapo are both serving life terms in U.S. prisons. <\/p>\n L\u00f3pez Serrano served only five years in U.S. custody on the trafficking conviction. According to media accounts and Mexican officials, he agreed to become a cooperating witness for U.S. prosecutors pursuing other traffickers.<\/p>\n L\u00f3pez Serrano was released from federal custody after serving his term and allowed to remain in the United States. However, the FBI re-arrested him in 2024 in connection with a scheme to distribute fentanyl, the deadly synthetic opioid.<\/p>\n On Wednesday, a federal judge in Virginia sentenced L\u00f3pez Serrano to five years in prison on the fentanyl rap, to be followed by five years of supervised release. <\/p>\n The new sentence dismayed those who hoped L\u00f3pez Serrano would soon be brought back to Mexico to stand trial.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s painful and outrageous to know that the person who ordered Javier\u2019s murder will continue avoiding his deserved punishment in Mexico,\u201d Griselda Tirana, the journalist\u2019s widow, wrote on Facebook.<\/p>\n She has long been at the forefront of efforts to pressure Washington to hand over L\u00f3pez Serrano. <\/p>\n But there is a serious hurdle: U.S. prosecutors have viewed L\u00f3pez Serrano as too valuable a source on the Mexican underworld to ship him back south, according to Mexico\u2019s former Atty. Gen. Alejandro Gertz Manero, who said he pressed the extradition demand with counterparts in Washington. <\/p>\n \u201cThey said he was a protected witness of the government of the United States and he was giving them a lot of information,\u201d Gertz Manero told reporters in December 2024, after L\u00f3pez Serrano was arrested in the fentanyl scheme. \u201cAnd, because of that, they couldn\u2019t help us.\u201d <\/p>\n In May, journalists, human rights activists and others gathered in front of the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City on the anniversary of Valdez\u2019s killing, demanding that L\u00f3pez Serrano be sent to Mexico to face justice.<\/p>\n That same month, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Mexican authorities would \u201cinsist\u201d on the extradition of L\u00f3pez Serrano.<\/p>\n The U.S. Justice Department declined to comment on the case.<\/p>\n Advocates say they plan to continue pressing the U.S. government, even though many lack optimism that Washington will ever relent.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are going to keep demanding \u2014 as we have since the assassination of Javier \u2014 that everyone, including the mastermind of this crime, be punished,\u201d said Roxana Vivanco, news editor at R\u00edodoce, Valdez\u2019s former publication. \u201cWe hope that, this time around, once he finishes his sentence in the United States he will be returned to Mexico to be judged for the killing of Javier.\u201d <\/p>\n As casualties mount among Mexican media personnel \u2014 and their assailants go free \u2014 many in Mexico view the case as a litmus test. The central question: Will there ever come a time when justice will prevail \u2014 and impunity will recede \u2014 in cases of Mexican journalists targeted by organized crime, corrupt politicians and others?<\/p>\n To date, the Valdez investigation has followed a distressing pattern: Hired trigger-men are sent to prison, their arrests lauded by Mexican authorities, while the \u201cintellectual authors,\u201d or masterminds, remain free.<\/p>\n \u201cIf this, the most high-profile case isn\u2019t solved, then we cannot hold our breaths for resolutions in less high-profile cases,\u201d said Jan-Albert Hootsen, Mexican representative for the Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based press advocacy group. <\/p>\n \u201cSo this is a really, really important case,\u201d Hootsen added. \u201cWe really need for this man to be extradited to Mexico eventually and stand trial.\u201d<\/p>\n Special correspondent Cecilia S\u00e1nchez Vidal contributed to this report. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MEXICO CITY\u00a0\u2014\u00a0The imprisonment of a cartel member in the U.S. has dashed hopes in Mexico for justice in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":169172,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[6577,1436,81201,81203,7083,24822,5686,48,52,51,47,50,49,81202,2457,29386,9150,7756,2281,435,18284],"class_list":["post-169171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-authority","tag-case","tag-damaso-lopez-serrano","tag-el-chapo","tag-extradition","tag-journalist","tag-killing","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-mastermind","tag-mexico","tag-organized-crime","tag-recent-year","tag-son","tag-u-s","tag-united-states","tag-valdez"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169171\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}