Spanish authorities detain 14 suspects linked to Mexican drug cartel

Spain has arrested 14 men suspected of links to the powerful Mexican Sinaloa cartel as part of a kidnapping and murder probe, police said Sunday.

The ring busted by Spanish investigators was mainly made up of Mexican nationals. It was connected to the Sinaloa drug cartel, which is based in northwestern Mexico and has been shaken by weeks of gang infighting.

"The dismantled criminal network, which is based in Catalonia, is believed to be involved in the kidnapping and death of a man whose body was found in a wooded area" in the northeastern Spanish region in August, police said in a statement.

The victim, whose nationality was not specified, allegedly worked with the gang and "had come from Italy for a meeting with several chiefs".

The victim's family in Kosovo reported his disappearance to the police after he was abducted between late May and June.

The family received a 240,000-euro ransom request ($253,000) and a total of $32,000 was paid in cryptocurrency.

The 14 detained suspects were allegedly involved in drug trafficking, money laundering, kidnapping and murder, the statement also said.

The Catalonia-based ring received shipments from Mexico containing clothes soaked with methamphetamine, which they then extracted in a Spanish lab, police added.

The Sinaloa cartel, which is named after the Mexican state where it originated, is one of the largest criminal organisations in the world. Two of its founders, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman and Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada are jailed in the United States.

"El Chapo", 67, has been serving a life sentence for drug trafficking since 2019.

Spiralling criminal violence, much of it linked to gang drug trafficking, has seen more than 450,000 people murdered in Mexico since 2006.