Ismail May Zambada was betrayed by one of his companion’s sons, el chapo Guzmán. This is the version that the Sinaloa Cartel leader’s lawyer has spread after the arrest of the capo last Thursday at a small airport in El Paso, Texas. Frank Pérez has assured the newspaper Los Angeles Times that his client was “violently kidnapped” by Joaquín Guzmán López. “My client did not surrender or negotiate any deal with the U.S. government,” he insisted. On Thursday morning, Zambada met with Guzmán López and — always according to the lawyer’s story — he was subdued by six men “wearing military uniforms” and thrown into the bed of a truck by El Chapo’s son, who tied his hands and feet. Raise And they took her to a secret runway. “They forced her onto the plane, Joaquin tied her legs to the seat and brought her to the United States against her will. Only the pilot, Joaquin, and my client were traveling on the plane,” Perez said.
The story of Ismael’s lawyer Mario Zambada Garcia reinforces the version that the drug trafficker never intended to hand himself over to the US authorities, who had been after him for more than 30 years and had put a price of $ 15 million on his head. A small Beechcraft King Air plane landed Thursday afternoon in the airfield outside El Paso, Texas, just a few kilometers from the border with Mexico. El Chapo, one of the sons of the founder of the Sinaloa cartel, and his partner, Joaquín Guzmán Loera, stepped off the plane, surprising agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the FBI. The agents arrested the two men and began efforts to bring them to justice.
Zambada appeared in a court in El Paso on Friday to hear the five charges the US government has accused him of: trafficking in fentanyl, cocaine and marijuana, money laundering, kidnapping, use of firearms and conspiracy to commit murder. He pleaded not guilty. Transcripts of the hearing show that the 76-year-old capo appeared in a wheelchair, which reinforces information that US agencies have about his fragile state of health. The epic of the great drug lord, inaccessible in the mountains of Sinaloa, impossible to catch and with great ability to elude authorities in any attempt at his capture, has collapsed.
Joaquín Guzmán López, 38, has been identified by the Justice Department only as a cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine trafficker. El Chapo’s son has been transferred to the Chicago Metropolitan Jail in the last few hours and is scheduled to appear before a judge next Tuesday. The penitentiary center he was taken to is the same one where his brother Ovidio has been since last year, when he was extradited from Mexico. The fate of Ovidio Guzmán has also become a mystery in recent days: Federal prison system records show that MiceOvidio Guzmán, as he is also known, was released on Tuesday, July 23, two days before the arrest of El Mayo Zambada. Officials in Mexico and the United States have stressed, without giving further details, that Ovidio Guzmán will remain under the protection of justice and that only precautionary measures have been changed.
The possibility that Guzmán López will benefit from the delivery of El Mayo Guzmán will be seen in the US courts, which already tried his father in 2019 and sentenced him to life imprisonment. The story told by Zambada’s lawyer opens new questions about the situation in the Sinaloa Cartel and the relationship between Los Chapitos with his father’s partner. The Mexican government has denied that this was part of an operation to capture the kingpin. The Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has assured that he learned about Zambada’s arrest when it had already happened and from the voice of the US ambassador to Mexico, Ken Salazar.
SIGN UP FOR THE FREE EL PAÍS MEXICO NEWSLETTER and to whatsapp channel And get all the important information on current events in this country.