Mexican drug lord ‘El Mayo’ Zambada and son of ‘El Chapo’ arrested in Texas
US operation to capture Sinaloa cartel leaders had the help of one of the captured men: a son of ‘El Chapo,’ official says
Mexican drug lord ‘El Mayo’ Zambada and son of ‘El Chapo’ arrested in Texas: According to a US law enforcement official briefed on the investigation, an alleged Mexican drug kingpin who evaded authorities for decades and is suspected of flooding the United States with deadly fentanyl is currently in custody in the United States. He was apparently lured across the border by federal agents along with another alleged leader of his cartel who was assisting with his capture.
Attorney General Merrick Garland announced in a statement that Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, 76, the alleged co-founder and leader of the powerful Sinaloa cartel, was arrested in El Paso, Texas, on Thursday.
According to him, Joaquin Guzman Lopez, 38, another alleged leader of the cartel, was also detained. Guzman is a child of the cartel’s scandalous prime supporter and previous manager Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, 69, who is carrying out a daily existence punishment in a US jail after he was sentenced a long time back on various charges.
According to a law enforcement official, Zambada and Guzman Lopez boarded a plane in the belief that they were inspecting property in Mexico near the US border.
According to the official, Zambada was unaware that Guzman Lopez was assisting with his capture and that US investigators had taken advantage of a rift in the Sinaloa cartel.
In one of the biggest victories for US law enforcement against the cartels, the plane instead landed close to El Paso, and FBI agents arrested both men.
“Two people got off the plane … and were serenely arrested,” by government specialists who were pausing, a laborer at the St Nick Teresa air terminal close to El Paso told Reuters. ” It appeared to be a quiet, organized thing,” the man, who declined to share his name out of worry for his security, said.
Mexican authorities were educated regarding the captures during a call from the US Consulate in Mexico Thursday evening, Mexico’s secretary of safety, Rosa Icela Rodriguez, said Friday.
“The Mexican government didn’t partake in this confinement or give up,” Rodriguez said during President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s day to day news gathering, adding Mexico is hanging tight for additional data from the US government.
In light of data from Mexico’s Public Movement Foundation, Rodriguez said, it is accepted the men went in a Cessna 205 from Hermosillo, Mexico, to the St Nick Teresa air terminal in Texas.
Rodriquez stated that Zambada is the subject of four active Mexican arrest warrants for organized crime and other illegal activities.
According to Garland, Zambada and Guzman Lopez are both facing a number of charges in the United States for allegedly leading the cartel’s criminal operations, which include its “deadly fentanyl manufacturing and trafficking networks.”
“Fentanyl is the deadliest medication danger our nation has at any point confronted, and the Equity Division won’t rest until each and every cartel chief, part, and partner liable for harming our networks is considered responsible,” Festoon said.
Among different lawbreaker allegations Zambada faces in the US, he was prosecuted by a northern Illinois terrific jury in 2009, as per the US State Office.
CNN has learned that a Justice Department aircraft frequently used for extraditions left El Paso and landed at a Chicago-area airport early on Friday, though his whereabouts are unknown.
In 2021, the reward for information leading to Zambada’s arrest was increased to $15 million. US authorities had been looking for his capture for years.
“The Zambada Garcia faction of the Sinaloa Cartel has been led by Ismael Mario Zambada Garcia for a considerable amount of time. According to the US State Department, Zambada Garcia “is unique in that he has spent his entire adult life as a major international drug trafficker, yet he has never spent a day in jail.”
FBI Chief Christopher Wray said Zambada and Guzman Lopez had “escaped policing many years” and “will currently confront equity in the US.”
The pair supposedly administered the dealing of “a huge number of pounds of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, and fentanyl into the US alongside related brutality,” Wray added.
The pair’s arrests “hit the heart of the cartel that is responsible for the majority of drugs, including fentanyl and methamphetamine, killing Americans from coast to coast,” according to D.E.A. chief Anne Milgram.
Strong cartel
The Sinaloa Cartel, named after the Mexican state where the posse was shaped in the last part of the 1980s, is perhaps of the most remarkable crook bunch on the planet, rounding up billions of dollars yearly by dealing drugs into the US and all over the planet.
Famous cartel manager Guzman, otherwise called “El Chapo,” was captured in Guatemala in 1993 on manslaughter and medication charges and removed to Mexico. In any case, he got away from Mexican jail in 2001, purportedly by paying off jail watchmen to sneak him out in a clothing truck. In 2014, he was arrested once more, but this time he got away through a tunnel.
In 2016, Guzman was detained for the third time before being extradited to the United States.
He was found guilty by a federal jury in a large trial in Brooklyn in 2018 and given a life sentence plus 30 years by the Justice Department.
Mexican drug lord ‘El Mayo’ Zambada and son of ‘El Chapo’ arrested in Texas: Guzman was found liable on 10 government criminal counts, which included participating in a proceeding with criminal undertaking, trick to wash opiates continues, global conveyance of cocaine, heroin, and weed, and utilization of guns.
Guzman’s attorneys argued that Zambada was the real kingpin of the cartel and that he had bribed the Mexican government to indict Guzman and remained free to run the criminal organization throughout the trial.
In February, Zambada was charged with conspiring to manufacture and distribute fentanyl, an extremely potent synthetic opioid that has killed tens of thousands of Americans in an overdose epidemic. This was the latest in a series of US indictments against him.
Breon Peace, the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, stated in the indictment that fentanyl “is responsible for immeasurable harm” and “was largely unheard of when [Zambada] founded the Sinaloa Cartel more than three decades ago.”
According to the indictment, Zambada has imported and distributed “massive amounts of narcotics” since 1989, generating billions of dollars in profits.
Government examiners said he utilized individuals to get “transportation courses and distribution centers” to import and store opiates, alongside hit men, or sicarios, to do kidnappings and murders in Mexico “to fight back against rivals who undermined the cartel.”
Vicente Zambada Niebla, Zambada’s son, admitted during testimony at Guzman’s 2018 trial that he passed along orders for murders and kidnappings. In 2019, a federal judge in Chicago gave him a sentence of 15 years in prison.
He started helping out the US government in 2011, examiners said in a May 2019 recording. They said he supported experts in assisting objective individuals from the Sinaloa Cartel and an opponent with ganging, which lead to the “charging of many significant level targets and many their partners in prosecutions all through the country,” CNN recently detailed.
In 2018, the younger Zambada testified that he had known “El Chapo” since he was 15 years old. The more youthful Zambada as often as possible alluded to “El Chapo” as “mi compadre,” or “my pal,” during his declaration and said the medication ruler was back up parent to his most youthful child.
In April 2012, a US federal grand jury in Texas also indicted “El Mayo” Zambada, who had a history of violence, along with other suspected Sinaloa top leaders and 22 people who were allegedly connected to the cartel, including Guzman. They were charged with murder and conspiracy in connection with organized crime, drug trafficking, and money laundering.
At that point, several federal courts in the United States had already brought criminal charges against Guzman and Zambada for drug trafficking and organized crime.
Two alleged acts of violence committed by cartel members were detailed in the 2012 indictment in western Texas; One took place in Ciudad Juarez in 2010 during a wedding ceremony, and it involved the kidnapping of an American citizen and two members of his family due to their connections to the rival Juarez cartel.
According to the indictment, the target was the groom, a Columbus, New Mexico, resident whose body had been beaten, strangled, and had had its hands “severed above the wrists and placed on his chest.”
According to the indictment, three days after the wedding, the groom, his brother, and his uncle’s bodies were discovered in the bed of a pickup truck.
Another incident mentioned in the indictment was the 2009 kidnapping, murder, and mutilation of a Texas resident “to account for the loss of a 670-pound load of marijuana seized by the Border Patrol.”