The United States has asked Mexico to extradite a son of jailed drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman accused of following in his father's footsteps, a Mexican government spokesman told AFP Monday.

Ovidio Guzman, who was captured in January, has allegedly helped to run his father's infamous Sinaloa cartel since El Chapo was handed over to the United States in 2017. The high-profile capture came just days before U.S. President Joe Biden visited Mexico for bilateral talks with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

The U.S. embassy in Mexico City presented the extradition request to the foreign ministry and attorney general's office, according to the spokesman, who did not want to be named because he was not authorized to speak on the issue. Two Mexican government sources also told Reuters that the U.S. made the extradition request.

The United States had offered a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to the capture of the 32-year-old, whose arrest in the northwestern city of Culiacan sparked a violent cartel backlash.

Ovidio Guzmán had not been one of El Chapo's high-profile sons until an aborted operation to capture him three years ago. That attempt similarly set off violence in Culiacan that ultimately led López Obrador to order the military to let him go.

El Chapo is serving a life sentence in the United States for trafficking hundreds of tons of drugs into the country over the course of 25 years.

Ovidio Guzman secured a court order in January blocking his immediate extradition to the United States, and a judge gave the United States until March 5 to present an extradition request.

Ovidio Guzman is accused of helping to oversee nearly a dozen methamphetamine labs in Sinaloa as well as conspiring to distribute cocaine and marijuana, according to Washington.

He also allegedly ordered the murders of informants, a drug trafficker and a Mexican singer who refused to perform at his wedding.

He was captured briefly once before in 2019, but security forces freed him after his cartel waged an all-out war in response.

Still, Ovidio Guzman is not one of the drug lord's best-known sons. Iván Archivaldo Guzmán and Jesús Alfredo Guzmán are known as "Los Chapitos," or "the little Chapos," and are believed to be running their father's cartel together with Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada.

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