If you’re going to announce a major arrest during election season, make sure you’ve got the right guy

It had all the markings of a classic "October Surprise," or a "June surprise" in Mexico’s case. Just days before the presidential election, Mexican police announced the arrest of Jesus Alfredo Guzman, whose father Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman command’s the Sinaloa drug cartels vast criminal empire. President Felipe Calderon isn’t up for reelection but the ...

By , a former associate editor at Foreign Policy.

It had all the markings of a classic "October Surprise," or a "June surprise" in Mexico's case. Just days before the presidential election, Mexican police announced the arrest of Jesus Alfredo Guzman, whose father Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman command's the Sinaloa drug cartels vast criminal empire. President Felipe Calderon isn't up for reelection but the development could only have been good news for the struggling campaign of Josefina Vazquez Mota, the candidate from his PAN party. Unfortunately, it appears they got the wrong guy

It had all the markings of a classic "October Surprise," or a "June surprise" in Mexico’s case. Just days before the presidential election, Mexican police announced the arrest of Jesus Alfredo Guzman, whose father Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman command’s the Sinaloa drug cartels vast criminal empire. President Felipe Calderon isn’t up for reelection but the development could only have been good news for the struggling campaign of Josefina Vazquez Mota, the candidate from his PAN party. Unfortunately, it appears they got the wrong guy

[T]he arrested man was in fact Felix Beltran Leon, a car salesman, the attorney general’s office said.

The BBC’s Will Grant in the capital, Mexico City, says within hours of the high-profile arrest, doubts had started to be cast on the official version of events.

A lawyer proclaiming to speak for the Guzman family released a statement denying that the suspect in custody was the drug boss’s son.

Mr Beltran Leon’s mother then spoke to journalists and denied any link to Joaquin Guzman or the Sinaloa cartel.

It took another few hours, while identity tests were carried out, before the government admitted it had made a huge mistake.

Even had it been real, "El Gordo’s" arrest might not have been enough to to erase Enrique Pena Nieto’s sizeable lead in the polls, but I’m guessing this news didn’t really raise spirits in the Mota campaign.  

Joshua Keating was an associate editor at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @joshuakeating

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