MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexican drug cartel leader Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada said that he was ambushed and kidnapped when he thought he was going to meet the governor of the northern state of Sinaloa, and then taken against his will to the United States, according to a letter released Saturday by his lawyer.
In the two-page letter, Zambada said that fellow drug lord Joaquín Guzmán López asked him to attend a meeting on July 25 with local politicians, including Sinaloa Gov. Rubén Rocha Moya, from the ruling Morena party.
But before any meeting took place, he was led into a room where he was knocked down, a hood was placed over his head, he was handcuffed, and then taken in a pickup truck to a landing strip where he was forced into a private plane that finally took him and Guzmán López, one of the sons of imprisoned drug kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, to U.S. soil, according to the letter.
Zambada’s comments were released a day after the U.S. ambassador to Mexico confirmed that the drug lord was brought to the United States against his will when he arrived in Texas in July on a plane along with Guzmán López.
After Zambada’s comments, which raised question about links between drug traffickers and some politicians in Sinaloa, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador asked reporters “to wait to get more information” and to hear the governor’s version.
The governor’s office didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment on Saturday. When the arrests of Zambada and Guzmán López were announced, Rocha told local media that he was in Los Angeles that day.
In early August, Zambada, 76, made his second appearance in U.S. federal court in Texas after being taken into U.S. custody the week before.
Guzmán López apparently had been in negotiations with U.S. authorities for a long time about possibly turning himself in. Guzmán López, 38, has pleaded not guilty to drug trafficking and other charges in federal court in Chicago.
But U.S. officials said they had almost no warning when Guzmán López’s plane landed at an airport near El Paso. Both men were arrested and remain jailed. They are charged in the U.S. with various drug crimes.
Ken Salazar, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, said that the plane had taken off from Sinaloa — the Pacific coast state where the cartel is headquartered — and had filed no flight plan. He stressed the pilot wasn’t American, nor was the plane.
The implication is that Guzmán López intended to turn himself in, and brought Zambada with him to procure more favorable treatment, but his motives remain unclear.
Zambada was thought to be more involved in day-to-day operations of the cartel than his better-known and flashier boss, “El Chapo,” who was sentenced to life in prison in the U.S. in 2019.
Zambada is charged in a number of U.S. cases, including in New York and California. Prosecutors brought a new indictment against him in New York in February, describing him as the “principal leader of the criminal enterprise responsible for importing enormous quantities of narcotics into the United States.”
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