Gulf Cartel boss sentenced in Houston

Houston Chronicle:

Behind armed guards and locked doors — in a secret hearing of judicial privacy not even given to some 9/11 terrorists or East Coast mafia dons — Osiel Cardenas Guillen, one of the most feared drug lords in history, was sentenced to 25 years in prison Wednesday.

In a Houston courtroom sealed to the public, he also was ordered to forfeit $50 million, a small slice of his estimated earnings. Cardenas surrendered at least $23 million in cash seizures quietly made over the past year by federal agents.

Cardenas, a 42-year-old native of the border city of Matamoros, Mexico, moved tons of cocaine and made millions of dollars as he ruled the Gulf Cartel drug empire with a viciousness and hands-on style seldom before seen, authorities said.

“Osiel Cardenas Guillen headed one of the most prolific and certainly most violent drug trafficking organizations that Mexico has ever spawned,” said Mike Vigil, a retired Drug Enforcement Administration agent who was based in Latin America as the agency's chief of international operations.

“He ruled very much like Stalin in that he used massive amounts of violence against his enemies both in the government and those that opposed him in other criminal organizations,” he continued.

The famed drug lord has not been seen publicly since he was ushered in shackles into a Houston courtroom in 2007 to be read his rights when he arrived in Texas.

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Cardenas' biggest claim to infamy is that he created and unleashed the Zetas, a gang of former Mexican special forces soldiers who became his private army and hit squad.

Since Cardenas' capture by the Mexican army during a wild shootout in 2003 and his later extradition to the U.S., the Zetas have raged against their rivals with a reputation for leaving victims decapitated and butchered in operations known for military precision and discipline.

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The secrecy may have had something to do with his cooperation although no one would say anything to the reporters who complained about not being allowed into the court room. It is hard to say what if anything his cooperation may have yielded to the government in the US or Mexico. Considering his notoriety, the sentence seems relatively light. I would guess that he would be a candidate for a room at a Supermax facility.