Rat bastard!How “El Chapo’s” Son Duped Drug-Cartel Kingpin “El Mayo” Zambada and Turned Himself InMEXICO CITY—El Chapo’s son wanted to turn himself in.
Joaquín Guzmán López was the financial brains behind the Sinaloa drug cartel that he and his three brothers had inherited from their father, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, who was captured in 2016. The Mexican criminal group was responsible for sending billions of dollars worth of fentanyl across the U.S. border, feeding a national addiction to a synthetic opioid that has ravaged communities across America.
Federal agents doubted the offer was serious when Guzmán Lopez first made it. Then he upped the ante: He would work with U.S. authorities to capture Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, a 76-year-old don who had founded the Sinaloa cartel with El Chapo, said current and former U.S. and Mexican officials. Law enforcement found the offer even more dubious and questioned whether he would deliver on his promise.
Then, on Thursday, Zambada joined Guzmán López on a flight to have a look at land and clandestine airstrips in northern Mexico, according to people familiar with the operation. But instead, Guzmán López had secretly agreed with U.S. officials to touch down at an airport near El Paso, Texas, these people said.
Upon landing, U.S. officials took both men into custody. It was one of the most important arrests of a Mexican drug lord in the past four decades. Homeland Security Investigations led the case in conjunction with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Zambada’s attorney declared his client not guilty at the El Paso federal court on Friday.
Guzmán López wanted to avoid what he feared would be a violent end to his drug-traffikcing career, according to a U.S. official and Oscar Hagelsieb, a former senior HSI agent in the border city of El Paso, Texas, familiar with the operation.
“Young cartel family members don’t necessarily want the fear and stress of leading a cartel,” he said. “They know what comes with being part of the family and being part of the cartel, and that’s violence and chaos.”
Guzmán López’s attorney declined to comment.
Hagelsieb said he believes Guzmán López is cooperating in exchange for a lesser sentence and seek to enjoy his drug-trafficking spoils while he is still young.
Over the past decade, the “Chapitos” had gained notoriety in the U.S. as they funneled millions of fentanyl pills across the southwest border. HSI, a little-known U.S. law-enforcement agency, was helping to dismantle their network, former and current U.S. officials said. The U.S. had placed a $5 million bounty on the head of Guzmán López and each of his brothers.
Last year, Mexican special forces captured Guzmán López’s brother Ovidio in a violent raid with intelligence provided by the U.S. In the attack, Black Hawk helicopters with mounted belt-fed miniguns strafed his compound in a town north of Culiacán, pushing back Ovidio’s inner security detail. By the time he was captured, about a hundred gunmen were dead, as well as 10 Mexican soldiers. U.S. and Mexican officials said.
Guzmán López and Zambada are “two of the most notorious leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel, one of the deadliest enterprises in the world,” President Biden said Friday. “Too many of our citizens have lost their lives to the scourge of fentanyl.”
The Mexican government didn’t participate “in that detention or surrender,” said Mexico’s security minister, Rosa Icela Rodríguez. The government had been informed of the event by the U.S. Embassy, she said at a news conference Friday. Mexico asked for, and received, photographs and fingerprints of the two men, confirming their identities. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador was notified of the arrests on Thursday afternoon.
Rodríguez, who said there were four outstanding warrants for Zambada, repeatedly underlined the close cooperation between the U.S. and Mexican government on law-enforcement matters.
She said that Guzmán López and Zambada took off on a Cessna aircraft. She identified an American pilot as having flown the plane that allegedly took the two Sinaloa bosses to the U.S.
But the pilot identified by Mexican officials as Larry Curtis Parker told The Wall Street Journal that his Cessna was mistakenly singled out because it was parked near a different aircraft in Hermosillo, the capital of northern Sonora state. He said that he routinely flies to Hermosillo for hunting and fishing and that he flew back this week by himself to New Mexico.
News footage suggests a larger, twin-engine Beechcraft King Air might have shuttled the two suspects back to the U.S. A government spokesman declined to comment.
https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/...o-zambada-and-turned-himself-in-14bfc7ce
