The leader and co-founder of the Sinaloa Cartel, Ismael ‘El Mayo’ Zambada, has pleaded not guilty before a court in the state of New York, in the United States, on charges related to organized crime, drug trafficking and money laundering.
Zambada, 76, appeared this Friday to have the 17 charges against him read before federal judge James Cho in the Eastern District Court of New York, in Brooklyn, according to the Mexican newspaper ‘El Universal’.
This New York court is the same one in which drug lord Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán was sentenced to life in prison for drug trafficking and in which former Mexican Security Secretary Genaro García Luna was also found guilty of drug trafficking by accepting bribes from the Sinaloa cartel.
Zambada was arrested on July 25 at an airport in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, near El Paso, after arriving on a private plane with Joaquín Guzmán López, son of drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, who had a deal with U.S. authorities and was the one who handed him over.
In a letter published last August, he said he was “kidnapped” by Guzmán, who handed him over against his will to the United States. The kidnapping began when he was tricked into attending a meeting at a ranch outside Culiacán where he was supposedly going to settle differences between the governor of the state of Sinaloa, Rubén Rocha Moya, and the former mayor of Culiacán, Héctor Cuen Ojeda.
After being received in person by the son of ‘El Chapo’, he explained that he was made to enter a “dark room” where he was immediately “ambushed” by a group of men who put a hood over his head after beating him and handcuffed him onto the plane where, accompanied by Joaquín Guzmán, he ended up being handed over to the US authorities in El Paso (Texas).
Zambada is accused of conspiracy to manufacture and distribute drugs such as cocaine and fentanyl internationally, among other charges. He also faces accusations of drug trafficking, money laundering and murder in Texas and Illinois.
