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The trial of Genaro García Luna, former Secretary of Public Security under the Government of Felipe Calderón, continues to give people something to talk about. During Tuesday’s hearing, the Mexican drug trafficker Sergio Villarreal Barragán, better known as “El Grande”, confessed in his testimony that the Beltrán Leyva were the ones who handed over Jesús Reynaldo Zambada, alias “El Rey”.
In his participation as a witness against the former Calderonista official, “El Grande” revealed that he also participated in the arrest operation, disguised as agent of the Office of the Special Prosecutor for Organized Crime Investigation (SEIDO).
What was the reason why they handed over “The King”? Villarreal Barragán explained that The Beltrán Leyva fell out with the Sinaloa Cartel after discovering that he was behind the arrest of Alfredo Beltrán Leyva, which occurred in January 2008.
Beltrán was so upset by his brother’s capture, he said, that he planned to take revenge and finish off Jesús El Rey Zambada. That is, “charge one brother for another.” “Arturo’s first plan was to kill him,” he commented, but he better advised him to ‘kill’ him in jail.
Villarreal Barragan assured that the Beltrán Leyva family leaked information to the Army to arrest “El Rey”, but since a part of the military was on the side of “El Chapo” and others of Arturo Beltrán, the information reached “El Mayo” and finally the operation against “The King” did not materialize.
However, this did not stop them from mounting a new raid against the Mexican drug lord and the Sinaloa Cartel, for which hitmen from the Beltrán Leyva disguised themselves as agents to mount an operation and thus stop “The King”.
In the trial of Genaro García Luna, “El Grande” maintained that “it was they” who handed over the younger brother of Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada; However, fearing that the police could “change” or protect the detainee, they took pictures so that “El Rey” could not escape.
Who is ‘King Zambada’?
Jesús Reynaldo Zambada García was born on August 13, 1961 in Culiacán, Sinaloa, according to the United States Department of the Treasury.
He is the brother of Ismael Zambada García, ‘El Mayo’, known for being the current leader of a faction of the Sinaloa Cartel and one of the few old-school drug traffickers, perhaps the only one, who has never been arrested.
J’s nameesús Zambada became important until his capture in 2008, when the then Attorney General’s Office (PGR) and US authorities discovered that he was a central piece in the structure of the Pacific Cartel.
The drug trafficker was in charge of transporting cocaine from South America to the United States through various types of transport such as container ships, submarines or airplanes. Too used the Mexico City International Airport (AICM) to import chemical precursors and essential chemicals used for drug manufacturing.
“El Rey” was arrested in October 2008 by Mexican authorities and extradited to the United States in 2012, where he pleaded guilty to various crimes associated with drug trafficking.
In 2018, he was one of the main witnesses in the trial of ‘El Chapo’ Guzman, where he explained how he had helped him free a second capture and revealed alleged links between Mexican authorities and drug trafficking. In 2021 he was removed from the US Treasury Department’s blacklist.
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