U.S. case dims hope in Mexico for extradition of alleged mastermind of journalist’s killing

MEXICO CITY — The imprisonment of a cartel member in the United States has dashed hopes for justice in Mexico for one of the country’s most notorious murders, the death of prominent journalist Javier Valdez, who was gunned down in broad daylight two blocks from his newspaper office in the cartel-warring city of Culiacán.

The brazen 2017 assassination of Valdez, a tireless chronicler of cartel violence and politicians’ ties to organized crime, drew international condemnation. The murder dramatized the dangers faced by journalists in Mexico, where scores of journalists have been murdered in recent years.

Valdez’s assassination remains the most notorious murder of a Mexican journalist in recent years.

While two gunmen serve prison terms in Mexico, authorities there have long demanded the extradition from the United Stares of the alleged mastermind: Dámaso López Serrano, a former Sinaloa cartel capo and the son of a close associate of Sinaloa syndicate’s imprisoned co-founder Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.

Mexican authorities and fellow journalists say López Serrano likely ordered the death because the journalist at Ríodoce, a weekly magazine that Valdez co-founded, brutally mocked the young narco.

On May 8, 2017, Valdez wrote a scathing column calling López Serrano a “junior” party boy and a fake “weekend”. pistol shotgun Moving around ostentatiously with 20 bodyguards, he was “good at conversation but not at work” and failed to fill his father’s shoes.

A week later, on May 15, assassins pulled Valdez, 50, from his car at noon and shot him at least a dozen times in downtown Culiacán, the capital of Sinaloa state. His body was left on the street among bullet casings; his signature Panama hat was covered in blood.

El Chapo’s godson, López Serrano, fled the inter-gang bloodshed several months later and surrendered to US authorities along the border in Calexico, California. He later pleaded guilty to smuggling tons of cocaine and other narcotics into the United States. He was never charged with Valdez’s murder in US courts.

He is the son of El Chapo’s confidant Dámaso López Núñez, known as El Licenciado or The Lawyer. His son’s mafia leader Mini Lic. His father and El Chapo are serving life sentences in US prisons.

López Serrano was detained in the United States for only five years on smuggling charges. He agreed to be a witness cooperating with U.S. prosecutors pursuing other smugglers, according to media reports and Mexican officials.

After serving his sentence, López Serrano was released from federal custody and allowed to remain in the United States. But the FBI arrested him again in 2024 in connection with a plot to distribute fentanyl, the deadly synthetic opioid.

On Wednesday, a federal judge in Virginia sentenced López Serrano to five years in prison, followed by five years of supervised release, on the fentanyl charge.

The new sentence horrified those who hoped López Serrano would soon be brought back to Mexico and tried.

The journalist’s widow, Griselda Tirana, wrote on Facebook: “It is painful and ugly to know that the person who ordered Javier’s murder will continue to evade the punishment he deserves in Mexico.”

He has long been at the forefront of efforts to pressure Washington to hand over López Serrano.

But there was a serious obstacle: According to Mexico’s former lawyer, U.S. prosecutors viewed López Serrano as too valuable a resource in the Mexican underworld to send him back south. Gen. Alejandro Gertz Manero said he was pressing the extradition request with his counterparts in Washington.

“They said he was a protected witness to the US government and that he gave them a lot of information,” Gertz Manero told reporters in December 2024 after López Serrano was arrested for the fentanyl scheme. “And that’s why they couldn’t help us.”

In May, journalists, human rights activists and others gathered outside the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City on the anniversary of Valdez’s killing, demanding that López Serrano be sent to Mexico to face justice.

That same month, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Mexican authorities would “insist” on the extradition of López Serrano.

The U.S. Department of Justice declined to comment on the case.

Advocates say they plan to continue pressuring the U.S. government, although most are not optimistic that Washington will give up.

“We will continue to demand that everyone, including the mastermind of this crime, be punished, as has been the case since Javier’s assassination,” said Roxana Vivanco, news editor of Valdez’s former publication Ríodoce. “This time, we hope that after completing his sentence in the United States, he will return to Mexico to stand trial for the murder of Javier.”

As casualties mount among Mexican media personnel and the attackers go free, many in Mexico see the incident as a litmus test. The fundamental question: Will there come a time when justice will prevail and impunity will be eliminated when it comes to Mexican journalists targeted by organized crime, corrupt politicians and others?

The Valdez investigation has followed a sad path so far: Hitmen-for-hire are sent to prison, their arrests are praised by Mexican authorities, while the “intellectual writers” or masterminds go free.

“If this, the most high-profile case, isn’t solved, then we can’t hold our breath to find solutions to the less high-profile cases,” said Jan-Albert Hootsen, Mexico representative for the Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based press advocacy group.

“So this is a really important case,” Hootsen added. “We really need this man to be extradited to Mexico eventually and prosecuted.”

Special correspondent Cecilia Sánchez Vidal contributed to this report.