Mexico City ? A former Mexican governor freed after six years behind bars was immediately re-arrested Thursday on a U.S. extradition request in which he is accused of helping smuggle 200 tons of cocaine into the United States, federal prosecutors said.

It was the latest chapter in the saga of Mario Villanueva, the former governor of the Caribbean state of Quintana Roo. Villanueva went into hiding in 1999 two weeks before the end of his six-year term and was hunted for two years until he was captured, sporting a beard and ponytail, in Cancun, the state’s largest city.

A Mexican judge on Tuesday ordered Villanueva’s release after he served six years on charges he laundered alleged drug money through Swiss banks while serving as governor. Villanueva was cleared of drug trafficking and organized crime charges.

But any hopes of liberty that Villanueva had quickly evaporated in the pre-dawn hours Thursday. Federal police showed up at a prison west of Mexico City, where he was to have been released, and took him to a maximum-security lockup in the capital pending extradition, according to a statement from the attorney general’s office.