Court Rejects Appeal by “El R1,” Accused of Ordering Manzo’s Murder, in Bid to Avoid Extradition to U.S.

A Mexican judge has thrown out an amparo filed by Ramón Ángel Álvarez Ayala, known as “El R1,” in an attempt to block his possible extradition or expulsion to the United States.

Daniel Marcelino Niño Jiménez, a federal criminal judge in Toluca, rejected the case as inadmissible. Álvarez Ayala, who was arrested by federal forces in July, is being held at the Altiplano maximum-security prison.

The defendant had sought federal protection against any extradition, expulsion or banishment order that he attributed to the Foreign Ministry. In a ruling published in judicial records, the judge said an amparo cannot be used against acts whose implementation remains uncertain.

“The challenged act must exist when the amparo application is filed,” Niño Jiménez wrote, because only then can it create, change or end a specific legal situation causing a real and current injury. Since no such order was known to exist, the judge found that the alleged actions were hypothetical and caused no present harm.

A grand jury in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia indicted Álvarez Ayala and his brother, Rafael Álvarez Ayala, known as “El R2,” in August on charges involving cocaine and methamphetamine trafficking to the United States.

Mexican federal investigations identify “El R1” as a close associate and trusted lieutenant of the late cartel boss Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as “El Mencho.” Authorities say Oseguera placed him in charge of drug trafficking in the Guadalajara metropolitan area and northern Jalisco. Álvarez Ayala is also accused of being the intellectual author of the killing of former Uruapan mayor Carlos Manzo.

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The challenged act must exist when the amparo application is filed, because only in that case would there be a specific legal situation capable of causing a real and current injury to the complainant’s legal sphere, whose remedy is sought through the amparo proceeding.