The lawyer of ‘El Mayo’ Zambada assured that the boss was “kidnapped” by Joaquín Guzmán López to be delivered to the United States

Ismael el Mayo Zambada was betrayed by one of the sons of his partner, El Chapo Guzmán. This is the version that the lawyer of the Sinaloa Cartel leader 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 agreement with the US government,” he stressed. 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 El Chapo’s son, who tied his hands and feet and threw him into the boat of a truck Raise And they took her to a secret runway. “They forced her onto the plane, tied her legs to the seat with Joaquin 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 from Zambada’s lawyer reinforces the version that the drug trafficker never intended to turn himself in to 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 Mexican border. One of the sons of the founder of the Sinaloa cartel and his partner, El Chapo Guzmán, 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 on Friday in a court in El Paso 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, in recent days, become a mystery: records from the federal prison system show that El Ratón, 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 his legal status has changed.

The possibility that Guzmán López will benefit from the delivery of El Mayo Guzmán will be seen in the US courts, which in 2019 already tried his father 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 and his father’s partner. The Mexican government has denied that it was part of the 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 that he learned 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.