Kidnap of El Chapo’s son captured on restaurant CCTV

Seven gunmen in pickup trucks swooped on the upscale bar and restaurant Monday around dawn and abducted the victims.

In a flash, 29-year-old Jesus Alfredo Guzman Salazar became a valuable potential bargaining chip — or a high-profile casualty — in the cartel turf battles that are wreaking havoc in large swaths of Mexico.

The governors of western Jalisco and Sinaloa states, where the two crime syndicates are based, have warned of possible reprisals or even a full scale warfare between the drug cartels if Guzman Salazar was not released. In a series of attacks a year ago, cartel henchmen killed 20 police officers in two ambushes and used a rocket-propelled grenade to down an army helicopter, killing 10 aboard.

Notified by AFP about the reported release, the Mexico Attorney General’s office said simply that it is “still working on the investigation”.

Alvarez Inzunza “provides key money laundering services to high-ranking Sinaloa Cartel members”, including lieutenants who operate on behalf of cartel leaders Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán and Ismael Zambada Garcia, alias “El Mayo”.

He is now being held in a maximum security federal prison in the northern city of Ciudad Juarez and fighting extradition to the United States.

Jesus Alfredo is the youngest of El Chapo’s two children from his first marriage.

More than 150,000 people have died in Mexico’s ongoing nine year Drug War.

But, he said, “kidnapping the sons could lead to, ‘I’ll trade you the life of your sons for the Manzanillo port or for Tijuana'”.

The kidnapping had been seen as the latest blow to the elder Guzman’s efforts from behind bars to maintain Sinaloa cartel’s dominance in the region amid challenges from an emerging rival, the Jalisco New Generation cartel.

On Friday, National Security Commissioner Renato Sales announced the arrest of a man believed to handle finances for Jalisco New Generation, but he said it was unrelated to the kidnapping.