Mexican drug cartel chief Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada mentioned he was ambushed and kidnapped when he thought he was going to satisfy the governor of the northern state of Sinaloa, then taken towards his will to the USA, in keeping with a letter launched Saturday (native time) by his lawyer.
Within the two-page letter, Zambada mentioned fellow drug lord Joaquín Guzmán López requested him to attend a July 25 assembly with native politicians, together with Sinaloa Gov. Rubén Rocha Moya of the ruling Morena celebration.
However they took him to a room the place they knocked him down, put a hood over his head, handcuffed him after which drove him in a van to a touchdown strip the place they pressured him onto a personal aircraft that ultimately flew him and Guzmán López, one of many sons of imprisoned Sinaloa drug cartel chief Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, to U.S. soil, in keeping with the letter.
Zambada’s feedback got here a day after the U.S. ambassador to Mexico confirmed the drug lord had been delivered to the USA towards his will when he arrived in Texas in July on a aircraft with Guzman Lopez.
The letter raised questions on ties between drug traffickers and a few politicians in Sinaloa, the Pacific coast state the place the Sinaloa cartel relies, however the governor denied any ties to the criminals and mentioned he was not in Sinaloa that day. After the arrests, he had mentioned he was in Los Angeles.
“There is no such thing as a complicity with crime,” Rocha mentioned Saturday at an occasion in Culiacán alongside Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and the nation’s president-elect, Claudia Sheinbaum.
“We’ve full confidence within the governor,” López Obrador mentioned.
Referring to his rivals, Rocha mentioned: “They need to power me right into a drug trafficker.”
“In the event that they mentioned I used to be going to be there (on the assembly), they lied, and if he (Zambada) believed them, he fell into the entice,” mentioned the governor.
Zambada’s letter didn’t say that Rocha was on the assembly location.
On the scene was Hector Melesio Cuen, a former native congressman, former mayor of Culiacan and former rector of the College of Sinaloa, whom he described as “an outdated buddy.” Mexican authorities have mentioned Cuen was killed the identical day, and Zambada’s letter mentioned he was killed on the assembly web site.
The trafficker mentioned that one in every of his safety guards, now lacking, was a commander within the Sinaloa judicial police.
In early August, Zambada, 76, made his second look in a U.S. federal courtroom in Texas after being taken into U.S. custody the earlier week.
Guzman Lopez had apparently been in negotiations with U.S. authorities for a very long time about the potential for turning himself in. Guzman Lopez, 38, pleaded not responsible to drug trafficking and different costs in federal courtroom in Chicago.
However U.S. authorities mentioned they acquired just about no warning when Guzman Lopez’s aircraft landed at an airport close to El Paso. Each males had been arrested and stay in jail. They’re charged in the USA with varied drug-related offenses.
Ken Salazar, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, mentioned the aircraft took off from Sinaloa and didn’t file a flight plan. He pressured that neither the pilot nor the aircraft had been People.
Guzmán López is believed to have meant to show himself in and took Zambada with him to safe a extra favorable deal, however his motives stay unclear.
Zambada was thought of the Sinaloa cartel’s mastermind and was regarded as extra concerned in its day-to-day operations than its better-known and extra flashy boss, “El Chapo,” who was sentenced to life in jail in the USA in 2019.
The Zambada faction of the Sinaloa cartel has been concerned in fierce preventing with one other faction led by Guzman’s sons.
Zambada was thought of an excellent negotiator along with his rivals and essentially the most influential trafficker who “has managed intensive corruption networks throughout many administrations in Mexico,” mentioned Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow on the Strobe Talbott Heart for Safety, Technique and Know-how on the Brookings Establishment.
Zambada is charged in a number of instances in the USA, together with in New York and California. Prosecutors filed a brand new indictment towards him in New York in February, describing him because the “principal chief of the felony group liable for importing large portions of narcotics into the USA.”