Mexico asks US to extradite ‘mastermind’ in journalist Javier Valdez’s killing

At a news conference this week, Mexican attorney general Alejandro Gertz said that Serrano was the “mastermind” of Valdez’s killing.

“We have already prosecuted the rest of the perpetrators and they are in jail,” he said.

Mr Gertz added that Mexico has called for his extradition “on countless occasions”, but was rebuffed because US authorities considered Serrano a “protected witness” who “was giving them a lot of information”.

Investigators believe that Serrano ordered Valdez’s killing after being angered by the journalist’s coverage of internal power struggles within the Sinaloa cartel.

Serrano’s father, Damaso Lopez Nunez, was considered a key lieutenant of cartel boss Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.

Following Guzman’s arrest and extradition to the US, Nunez launched a bloody power struggle for control of the cartel, but was ultimately captured in a raid in Mexico City in 2017.

In July 2017, Serrano surrendered to US authorities to face drug trafficking charges and cooperated in exchange for a reduced sentence.

At the time, US law enforcement officials described him as the “highest ranking Mexican cartel leader” to “self-surrender” in the US.

He was released from prison on parole in 2022. He was re-arrested on Friday to face additional fentanyl trafficking charges.

At the time of his death, Valdez had been covering a bloody power struggle inside the Sinaloa cartel which pitted Nunez and Serrano against Guzman’s sons.

Eight days before his death, he published a column in which he described Serrano as spoiled, “good for chatting but not business” and a “weekend gunman with a prop pistol”.

Mexico is one of the world’s most violent countries for journalists.

Data from Reporters Without Border shows that more than 150 journalists have been killed there since 1994.

In 2022, at least 15 were killed, making it one of the most violent years ever for Mexican journalists.

The violence has continued. In October, a journalist was shot dead in the violence-plagued city of Uruapan.

The following day, an entertainment reporter was gunned down inside a restaurant she owned in the state of Colima.