The president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has accused the United States this Thursday of being co-responsible for the violence in the state of Sinaloa after the arrest of the leader and co-founder of the Sinaloa Cartel, Ismael ‘El Mayo’ Zambada.
“They released or gave a different status to one of the detainees in the United States at the same time that they took another character and that requires an explanation because if we are now facing a situation of instability, of confrontation in Sinaloa, it is because they made that decision,” he said in a press conference.
The president has criticized that an agreement for his capture has been reached without informing the Mexican authorities. “We do not agree that Mexico is ignored,” he said, adding that there cannot be “a relationship of cooperation when unilateral measures are taken.”
Likewise, López Obrador has criticized the operation to arrest ‘El Mayo’ Zambada, and has assured that it was “totally illegal.” “It cannot be correct because they murdered people,” he stressed, thus naming the former rector of the Autonomous University of Sinaloa, Héctor Melesio Cuén Ojeda.
The United States Attorney General, Merrick Garland, announced at the end of July the arrest in El Paso, Texas, of ‘El Mayo’ and Joaquín Guzmán López, son of the drug lord Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán, who face numerous charges in the country for leading the operations of the organization.
‘El Mayo’ Zambada assured in a letter in mid-August that Joaquín Guzmán, who had reached an agreement with Washington, handed him over against his own will to the US authorities on July 25.
