Mexican drug kingpin nicknamed 'Friend Killer' is released from US prison 21 years after capture

Notorious Mexican drug lord Osiel Cárdenas Guillén , known as "Friend Killer", has been released from a US prison more than two decades after he was captured .

Cárdenas Guillén was released after serving most of a 25-year prison sentence, authorities confirmed on Friday. He served his time at USP Terre Haute in Indiana. He was immediately placed in the custody of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and will likely be deported back to Mexico, the Associated Press reported.

Cárdenas Guillén faces two arrest warrants in Mexico and will likely be detained upon arrival. Cárdenas Guillén, whose nickname was “El Mata Amigos” or “The One Who Kills Friends”, was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2010. He was also ordered to forfeit tens of millions of dollars.

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Cárdenas Guillén was extradited to the U.S. in January 2007. The 57-year-old, from Matamoros, Mexico , moved tons of cocaine and made millions of dollars through the Gulf cartel , based in the border cities of Reynosa and Matamoros.

Known for his brutality, Cárdenas Guillén created the most bloodthirsty gang of hitmen Mexico has ever known, the Zetas. The gang was made up of former Mexican special forces soldiers who committed acts of terror at Cárdenas Guillén command. The Zetas were regularly involved in slaughtering dozens of people, decapitating them or dumping heaps of hacked-up bodies on roadways.

The Zetas lived on long after Cárdenas Guillén was captured in 2003. By 2010, the Zetas had formed their own cartel , spreading terror-style attacks across Mexico as far south as Tabasco until their top leaders were killed or arrested in 2012-2013.

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An offshoot of the Zetas, the Northeast cartel, continues to control the border city of Nuevo Laredo, across from Laredo, Texas. Cárdenas Guillén’s most brazen act was when he surrounded and stopped a vehicle carrying two US Drug Enforcement Administration agents and one of their informants in 1999 in the border city of Matamoros, across from Brownsville, Texas.

His gunmen pointed their weapons at the agents and demanded they hand over the informant, who would almost certainly be tortured and killed. The agents toughed it out and refused, reminding him it would be a bad decision to kill employees of the DEA. Cárdenas Guillén eventually called off his gunmen, but not before reportedly saying “You gringos, this is my territory.”