For the Ministry of Public Security (MSP) the arrest of José Arnoldo Díaz Castro, alias “Pelleja, was no accident. Gustavo Mata, minister of that portfolio, said that the subject -in flight since November 2013- had been located in the area a few days earlier, and rejected that the capture was fortuitous.
Díaz Castro, with an Interpol arrest warrant, is designated as the leader of a powerful drug trafficking organization with a network of heliports distributed between the North Zone and different points of the province of Limón.
Although part of his group was arrested in November 2013, “Pelleja” mocked the police and judicial authorities repeatedly. For example, in 2016, the Judicial Investigation Agency (OIJ) failed to capture him in an operation executed in Tortuguero. At the time, the authorities suspected that Diaz would have mobilized – with the support of Colombian groups – along the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua and Honduras.
“Pelleja” received a knife wound on his left arm when fighting with another man. Despite being armed, he could not defend himself against the attack and chose to take refuge in a house in the area.
It was not pure coincidence. Do not look down on the merits of the police. We were accurate with the detention of this subject,”
said the minister, who added that in recent years they made four or five raids in the area of the bars to find Díaz but he’s knowledge of the area always helped him escape.