A convicted drug kingpin from the Netherlands – considered one of Europe’s most wanted criminals – has been killed in a gun battle in Mexico.
Marco Ebben, 32, was shot dead in Atizapan de Zaragoza, a municipality 25km (15 miles) from Mexico City, authorities said on Friday.
Ebben, who once faked his own death, was killed in a shootout in a car park outside the Mexican capital on Thursday.
Experts confirmed Ebben’s identity, an official at the state prosecutor’s office told the AFP news agency, asking not to be named because they were not authorised to discuss the case.
European law enforcement agency Europol listed Ebben as one of Europe’s “most wanted fugitives” for smuggling drugs from Brazil to the Netherlands.
Its website says he was sentenced in absentia in October 2020 to more than seven years in prison. He had managed to evade arrest since that sentence was handed down.
In May 2024, Ebben spoke to the Dutch regional broadcaster Rijnmond to say he had nothing to do with a series of explosions targeting a plumber in the city of Vlaardingen.
Between 2014 and 2015, Ebben and his accomplices allegedly smuggled 400kg (880 pounds) of cocaine in containers filled with pineapples, according to Europol.
To evade arrest, the Dutchman reportedly faked his death last October in the Mexican cartel stronghold of Culiacan amid a turf war between two factions of the Sinaloa Cartel.
According to news reports, Ebben was accused of links to one of the factions but no evidence of his death was found at the time, except for a statement from an alleged girlfriend who claimed to have recognised the body.
The violence in Sinaloa follows the surprise arrest on US soil of cartel co-founder Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada in late July, which is believed to have unleashed an internal power struggle.
Also on Friday, Mexican authorities said they arrested a suspected Sinaloa Cartel drug trafficker active in the northern state of Chihuahua who was wanted by the United States.
Mexican media identified him as Humberto Rivera, alias “El Chato,” “El Don” or “El Viejon”.
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