The US ambassador to Mexico has acknowledged that drug lord Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada Garcia was brought to the United States against his will when he arrived in Texas in July on a plane along with fellow drug lord Joaquin Guzman Lopez, son of the infamous cartel kingpin “El Chapo”.
Zambada Garcia’s lawyer had earlier claimed that El Mayo, 76, the longtime chief of the Sinaloa drug cartel, had been kidnapped from Mexico by Guzman Lopez and six men in military uniforms who flew him to the US against his will.
US Ambassador Ken Salazar said on Friday that “the evidence we saw … is that they had brought El Mayo Zambada against his will”.
“This was an operation between cartels, where one turned the other one in,” Salazar said, adding that no US resources were involved in El Mayo being brought into the country.
The Guzman family lawyer has denied a kidnapping took place and called it a voluntary surrender after extended negotiations.
The arrest of El Mayo has ignited fears in Mexico of a new wave of violence and instability, as well as possible deterioration of relations with the US as the ambassador’s statement came hours after Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador complained “there is no cooperation” from Washington on clarifying the circumstances around the arrests of Zambada Garcia and Guzman Lopez.
“They have not given us sufficient information,” Lopez Obrador said at a news conference Friday.
Salazar said no US personnel, resources or aircraft were involved in the flight on which Guzman Lopez turned himself in, and that US officials were “surprised” when the elderly Zambada Garcia also showed up at an airport outside El Paso, Texas, on July 25.
Zambada Garcia’s faction of the Sinaloa cartel had been engaged in fierce factional fighting with El Chapo’s sons, including Guzman Lopez, who is the half-brother of the faction’s leaders.
Guzman Lopez, 38, had apparently been in long negotiations with US authorities about possibly turning himself in and has pleaded not guilty to drug trafficking and other charges in federal court in Chicago.
US officials said they had almost no warning when Guzman Lopez’s plane landed at an airport near El Paso last month.
The implication is that Guzman Lopez intended to turn himself in, and brought Zambada Garcia with him to procure more favourable treatment from US authorities, but his motives remain unclear.
Sentenced to life in prison by a US court in 2019, Zambada Garcia was thought to be more involved in the day-to-day operations of the Sinaloa cartel than his former, better-known boss El Chapo.
Zambada Garcia has been charged in a number of US cases, including in New York and California. Prosecutors also brought a new indictment against him in New York in February.
Amid fears of spiralling violence among drug gangs, President Lopez Obrador took the unusual step of issuing a public appeal to drug cartels not to fight each other.
