Mexico Court Orders “Queen of the Pacific” Released from Prison

MEXICO CITY – A court in the western Mexican state of Jalisco has ordered the immediate release of Sandra Avila Beltran, known as the “Queen of the Pacific,” who, according to press reports Saturday, could leave prison in the coming hours.

In the ruling, the court revoked the 54-year-old Avila’s five-year sentence for money laundering.

Avila and then-boyfriend Juan Diego Espinosa, a Colombian national known as “El Tigre,” were arrested on Sept. 28, 2007, for allegedly smuggling several tons of cocaine into the Mexican Pacific port of Manzanillo.

She was acquitted in Mexico on drug and racketeering charges in late 2010, but was extradited to the United States on Aug. 9, 2012.

Avila pleaded guilty in that country to being an accessory after the fact to drug trafficking.

But the sentence handed down in July 2013 by the judge in Miami – 70 months – was equal to the amount of time Avila had already spent behind bars following after her arrest in Mexico.

That left her technically free, although the Queen of the Pacific was deported back to Mexico a month later and convicted of money laundering.

Avila is the niece of Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, alias “El Padrino” (The Godfather), who is serving a long prison sentence in Mexico; and grand-niece of Juan Jose Quintero Payan, a co-founder of the Juarez cartel who was sentenced in the United States to 18 years in prison on drug-trafficking charges.

The first public mention of the Queen of the Pacific came in a 2004 “narcocorrido,” or drug ballad, by Los Tucanes de Tijuana.

Mexican media have likened Avila to the main character in Spanish writer Arturo Perez-Reverte’s novel “La Reina del Sur” (The Queen of the South), which was subsequently turned into a hit television miniseries.