A drug trafficker known as “JJ,” who is suspected of shooting Paraguayan soccer player Salvador Cabañas, is not hiding in Colombia, according to the DIJIN judicial police.
Cabañas was shot in the head in a bar in Mexico City in January, but survived. Interpol issued an arrest warrant for Jose Balderas Garza, alias “JJ,” after one of his henchman told police that JJ shot the footballer.
Drug kingpin Edgar Valdez Villareal or “La Barbie,” a leader of Mexican cartel Beltran Leyva, claimed after he was captured in late August that he had helped JJ to hide in Colombia.
DIJIN head General Carlos Ramiro Mena said Monday that La Barbie’s statement was an attempt to divert the investigation, and that “the Mexican authorities do not even have reports that he left the country.”
Colombian authorities are currently investigating various suspected links between Mexican drug cartels and crime in Colombia. After La Barbie’s capture, Mexican authorities released a tape on which he says “I have investments in Colombia in my field of work,” which he then admits is “drugs.”
In early September eleven people were arrested in Colombia on suspicion of shipping drugs from the FARC to La Barbie’s Beltran Leyva cartel. Among those detained was Julio Cesar Piña Soberanis, alias “Julio,” a Mexican believed to be La Barbie’s representative in Colombia.