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Tufiño was already a known trafficker: He had pleaded guilty in #US federal court to cocaine distribution conspiracy in 2021 & served >3 years in a US prison before he was deported home to #Ecuador last year. Now the US #military had picked him up amid the wreckage of a semisubmersible vessel — a “narco sub.”
In his gang-controlled hometown, Tufiño was known as Fresco Solo, a skilled navigator they alleged was recruited by criminals to smuggle drugs north.
On the other hand, does this mean that if US citizens are caught trying to take drugs (or other items) in to a country that imposes the death penalty for doing so, can be arrested and executed quickly without any sort of trial or due process.
I am sure the US would protest most strongly about that.
So much for Due Process, how many of these Narco Boats are just innocent people going about their normal lives.
Really? Hegseth knows he’s being scrutinized by the world, and when this regime is over, he’s going to hightail to a country where they don’t extradite scum like him.
@Nonilex
This group of narco traffickers must have had political connections to the Trump regime.
I would be shirking my responsibility NOT to speculate.
Andrés Fernando Tufiño Chila was 1 of only 2 people known to have survived a US strike on a vessel that the #Trump admin alleged was smuggling drugs from #SouthAmerica. Trump had described the Ecuadorian & a fellow survivor of the Oct 16 strike in the #Atlantic Ocean as “terrorists” who would be returned to their countries of origin “for detention & prosecution.”
In #Ecuador — a govt closely aligned with Trump on #counternarcotics enforcement — the admin had a willing partner, eager to learn what the alleged trafficker could tell them about his employers.
Tufiño, then 41, stepped off the #US #military plane at the Quito airport on the morning of Oct 18 in shackles, cut & bruised from the attack but walking on his own, acc/to Col. Carlos Ortega, then the director of anti-narcotics for Ecuador’s national police.
Tufiño was already a known trafficker: He had pleaded guilty in #US federal court to cocaine distribution conspiracy in 2021 & served >3 years in a US prison before he was deported home to #Ecuador last year. Now the US #military had picked him up amid the wreckage of a semisubmersible vessel — a “narco sub.”
In his gang-controlled hometown, Tufiño was known as Fresco Solo, a skilled navigator they alleged was recruited by criminals to smuggle drugs north.
But in transferring him to Ecuadorian custody, 3 officials said, #US forces didn’t provide any #evidence that could be used to detain him — no seized drugs, no phone or GPS records, no videos, none of the “intelligence” that led them to target his vessel.
On landing in Quito, US officials told the Ecuadorians that the transfer was a “humanitarian” repatriation, Ortega said.
Within hours, Tufiño was let go.
…A WaPo investigation into the Oct 16 strike reveals a gap between the admin’s tough-on-trafficking rhetoric & its actions on the high seas. #Trump has declared a “non-international armed conflict” on drug cartels. The #WhiteHouse & the #Pentagon have likened traffickers to members of al-Qaeda & the Islamic State — terrorists who wield drugs as weapons to kill Americans.
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