Former Mexican drug kingpin denies killing US agent

One of Mexico's most notorious drug lords, wanted by the United States for the 1985 murder of an undercover agent, spoke out from hiding in an article Sunday to deny involvement in the killing.

Rafael Caro Quintero, founder of the now defunct Guadalajara cartel, the country's most powerful drug trafficking network in the 1980s, denied murdering the Drug Enforcement Administration officer and apologized for involvement in trafficking during an interview with prominent news magazine Proceso.

Caro Quintero, who served 28 years of a 40-year sentence in a Mexican prison for the murder, was freed over a legal technicality in 2013 and then vanished.

US authorities, who were outraged by the release, have sought to extradite the 63-year-old fugitive.

"I've never talked about this case, it's the first time... I did not kidnap, did not torture and did not kill him," Caro Quintero said from hiding in northern Mexico.

Caro Quintero was convicted in Mexico for the abduction, torture and murder of DEA agent Enrique Camarena, whose Mexican pilot, Alfredo Zavala, was also killed.

"Yes, I was there at the place (of the crime), that's my participation, nothing more," he said, adding that he now wants to live in peace and no longer traffics drugs.

"I apologize to the society of Mexico for the mistakes I made, to the Camarena family, the DEA, the US government. I apologize."

Camarena's murder was considered a vendetta by the drug capos of Guadalajara for investigations by the DEA agent that led to the seizure of a massive marijuana field in the northern state of Chihuahua.