Ex-Officer Gets 60-Year Term
A judge has sentenced a former Mexican army major to 60 years in prison, an unusually heavy sentence, for helping drug lord Amado Carrillo Fuentes escape capture, the Justice Department said Friday in a statement.
Victor Soto Conde was discharged from the army and fined $38,000 as part of the same sentence for organized crime drug trafficking and money laundering.
Soto used his inside knowledge of army operations to tip off Carrillo about a raid to capture him at the wedding of his sister in the northern state of Sinaloa.
The drug trafficker’s alleged lieutenant, Ismael Zambada, paid Soto for providing the information.
Carrillo fled the wedding shortly before police and troops arrived to arrest him, but later died in a botched plastic surgery operation.
The sentence is the maximum allowable under Mexican law, which does not allow for life imprisonment.
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