The US ambassador to Mexico maintains that no US resources were involved in removing El Mayo from Mexico to prison in Texas.
The U.S. ambassador to Mexico 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. boss “El Chapo”.
Zambada Garcia’s lawyer had previously claimed that El Mayo, 76, the former head of the Sinaloa drug cartel, had been kidnapped in Mexico by Guzman Lopez and six men in military uniforms who flew him to the U.S. against his will.
U.S. Ambassador Ken Salazar said Friday that “the evidence we saw… is that they brought in El Mayo Zambada against his will.”
“This was an operation between cartels, where one handed over the other,” said Salazar, adding that no US resources were involved in El Mayo’s entry into the country.
The Guzman family’s lawyer denied that a kidnapping had occurred and classified it as a voluntary surrender after extensive negotiations.
El Mayo’s arrest raised fears in Mexico of a new wave of violence and instability, as well as a possible deterioration in relations with the US, as the ambassador’s statement came hours after Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador complained “there is no cooperation” from Washington in clarifying the circumstances of the arrests of Zambada Garcia and Guzman Lopez.
“They didn’t give us enough information,” López Obrador said at a press conference on Friday.
Salazar said no U.S. personnel, resources or aircraft were involved in the flight on which Guzmán López turned himself in, and that U.S. authorities were “surprised” when elderly Zambada Garcia also showed up at an airport outside El Paso, Texas, on July 25th. .
The Zambada Garcia faction of the Sinaloa cartel has been involved 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, apparently has been in lengthy negotiations with U.S. authorities about whether to turn himself in and has pleaded not guilty to drug trafficking and other charges in Chicago federal court.
U.S. officials said they had almost no warning when Guzmán López’s plane landed at an airport near El Paso last month.
The implication is that Guzmán López intended to turn himself in and brought Zambada Garcia with him to obtain more favorable 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 its former and better-known boss, El Chapo.
Zambada Garcia has been charged in several cases in the US, including in New York and California. Prosecutors also filed a new charge against him in New York in February.
Amid fears of escalating violence among drug gangs, President López Obrador took the unusual step of issuing a public appeal to drug cartels not to fight each other.
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
