Jalisco Court Orders 'Queen of the Pacific' Released from Prison Fox News Latino
go to original February 7, 2015

A court in the western Mexican state of Jalisco has ordered the immediate release of Sandra Avila Beltran, known as the "Queen of the Pacific," who, according to press reports Saturday, could leave prison in the coming hours. In the ruling, the court revoked the 54-year-old Avila's five-year sentence for money laundering.

Avila and then-boyfriend Juan Diego Espinosa, a Colombian national known as "El Tigre," were arrested on Sept. 28, 2007, for allegedly smuggling several tons of cocaine into the Mexican Pacific port of Manzanillo.

She was acquitted in Mexico on drug and racketeering charges in late 2010, but was extradited to the United States on Aug. 9, 2012. Avila pleaded guilty in that country to being an accessory after the fact to drug trafficking.

But the sentence handed down in July 2013 by the judge in Miami - 70 months - was equal to the amount of time Avila had already spent behind bars following after her arrest in Mexico.

That left her technically free, although the Queen of the Pacific was deported back to Mexico a month later and convicted of money laundering.

Read the rest at Fox News Latino

Photo: Contrapunto

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