2024-07-26 20:29:10
After a lifelong criminal life exporting cocaine, marijuana and heroin to the United States, fentanyl caused the downfall of one of Mexico’s most famous kingpins. Ishmael May Zambada was arrested Wednesday afternoon at the Santa Teresa airport in El Paso (Texas) with Joaquín Guzmán López, one of the children of El Chapo Guzman. The two men lead two of the four factions of the powerful Sinaloa Cartel. The arrest was celebrated at the highest levels of Washington. President Joe Biden celebrated the capture of two drug dealers on Friday at a time when Republicans accused him of allowing the flow of a powerful synthetic opioid, which has caused hundreds of thousands of American deaths. The head of the Sinaloa Cartel faces 13 other serious charges: money laundering, kidnapping, use of weapons and conspiracy to kill.
The details of the fall May Zambia is not yet visible. Within hours of their arrest, the arrest of the two leaders of the cartel was full of speculation and unconfirmed features. The New York Times He said Zambia had been negotiating its surrender to US authorities for three years. Wall Street Journal He said Guzmán López betrayed the 76-year-old boss, who convinced him to board a small plane to check out some private runways.
To these features the Mexican Government has only added confusion. “We don’t know if it was a delivery or an arrest,” said the Secretary of Defense and Civil Protection, Rosa Icela Rodríguez. “We have to wait to see if the catch is there or here. I think there,” added the President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, in his daily press conference. To add complexity to the history of the mystery in the area of Zambada, the Mexican authorities confirmed that on a private plane that departed from Hermosillo, in the State of Sonora, shortly before eight in the morning on Wednesday, bound for the United States , the only resident is the pilot. Larry Curtis Parker. Neither May nor was Guzmán López with him. “One left and three to come,” said Rodríguez. The Cessna plane landed after 10:00 am local time.
The tribes of Zambia cooperated with the authorities and rejected his lawyer, Frank Pérez. “He didn’t give himself up voluntarily, he was brought here against his will,” the lawyer said Friday outside federal court in El Paso. His first hearing will be held on Thursday, July 31, in front of Judge Anne Berton.
This Friday, Zambada pleaded not guilty to five charges brought against him by authorities: fentanyl trafficking, money laundering, kidnapping, use of weapons and conspiracy to commit murder. If found guilty, Zambada will have the same fate as his former partner El Chapo Guzmán, life in the shadows in maximum security prison. Guzmán López only faces charges of drug trafficking.
“The Department of Justice has detained two alleged leaders of the Sinaloa cartel, one of the most violent and powerful gangs in the world,” said the United States attorney general. Merrick Garland in the statement confirming the arrest. Alejandro Mayorkas, Secretary of Homeland Security, introduced the project within the efforts of the Biden and Kamala Harris Administration in the fight against fentanyl. Anne Milgram, director of training for the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), has called the operation “a fight at the heart of the cartel.”
May Zambada, born in 1948 in Culiacán, the capital of Sinaloa, has been sought and arrested by US authorities for ten years. His name appears in at least five major legal cases opened between 2003 and 2016 in federal courts. In all of them it appears that he is accused of facilitating the smuggling of cocaine and marijuana into the United States and that he inherited a criminal empire after the arrest of El Chapo, who since 2019 has been serving a life sentence in Colorado.
The search for the kingpin increased with the crusade that US authorities have undertaken to combat the arrival of fentanyl into the country. Washington has targeted large Mexican gangs, especially one operating in Sinaloa, who are accused of receiving chemical precursors from Asia and opiate production in private laboratories in the mountains. Fentanyl has caused a health emergency with more than 100,000 deaths annually and is the leading cause of death among Americans aged 18 to 45. In February, prosecutors opened a new case against Zambada for manufacturing and distributing this drug. .
“Fentanyl is the deadliest drug our country has ever faced, and the Justice Department will not rest until all of our bosses, members and associates pay for poisoning our community,” Garland said.
May and Guzmán López join a growing list of Sinaloa cartel leaders and other members facing justice in the United States. The DEA has specifically pursued Los Chapitos, the cell that inherited the day-to-day operations of the organization after its arrest El Chapo in 2016. These include one of his sons, Ovidio Guzmán López, who was arrested for the second time and sent to the United States in September, and Néstor Isidro Pérez Salas, known as the possessions, considered one of the chief hitmen of the organization.
Not a day in prison
Despite his long criminal history, the United States anti-narcotics agency stood out May Zambia is something unique. The organization said: “Although he has dedicated his entire life to being a drug dealer, he has not spent a single day in prison. 14 years ago, the DEA offered him a five million dollar reward.
His wild life is the stuff of legend. In April 2010, Zambada was brought to his home by journalist Julio Scherer, one of the students of the Mexican press and founder of the magazine. Procedure. The meeting took place in a chaotic house lost in the mountains and was not an interview, because the drug dealer was reluctant to answer the 83-year-old reporter’s questions. “He is over 1.80 meters tall and has a body like a wall, ” Scherer wrote in his notebook. Zambia gives some details of his personal life. He has a wife, five daughters, 15 grandchildren and one great-grandchild. And he also shared one of his biggest fears. He admitted: “I am afraid that they will lock me up.
May He established himself at the top of the organization in the 80s, as well El Chapo and Juan José Esparragoza, The blue, thanks to his contacts with Colombian bosses, who provided him with cocaine, heroin and methamphetamines to transport them to the largest market on the continent, the United States. Prosecutors say these operations have generated a fortune of several “billions of dollars.” During the investigation against El Chapo He revealed that Zambia has a budget of about one million dollars a month to pay bribes to the authorities and thus is able to guarantee the movement of drugs in the north.
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