Mexican federal prosecutors suggested Thursday that U.S. authorities made a deal with drug lord Joaquín Guzmán López — who surrendered and handed over another Sinaloa cartel leader, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada — to have his brother moved from a high-security U.S. prison.
In a statement, the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) also accused the US authorities of not responding to multiple requests for information on the case and assured that the small plane that carried both drug traffickers from Mexico to the United States, where they were detained on July 25, had multiple records and identification numbers, some of them false.
The U.S. government, through its ambassador in Mexico, denied having any ties to the aircraft and said it did not know Zambada was on board until the plane was in flight.
The statement from the prosecution is the latest chapter on everything that surrounded the Mysterious arrest of the two drug traffickers in Texas, one of whom (Guzmán López) allegedly kidnapped the other (Zambada) and flew him to an airport near El Paso.
This story is not lacking in cartel connections with Sinaloa politicians, homicides and alleged manipulation of evidence by the local prosecutor’s office.
The Mexican government has announced it wants to press charges against Guzmán López, but not for his involvement in the cartel founded by his father, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán — currently serving a life sentence in a U.S. prison — but for kidnapping Zambada, forcing him onto a plane and handing him over to the United States, which Mexico considers a crime of treason.
The prosecution also believes that two of Zambada’s bodyguards – one of them a police officer – who disappeared after the kidnapping, may have been murdered.
Joaquín Guzmán López had been negotiating with the United States for some time for his eventual extradition, but according to the latest statement from the prosecutor’s office, he could have taken “El Mayo” to Texas – one of the oldest and most astute bosses of the criminal organization – to ensure that his brother, Ovidio Guzmán, arrested and extradited last year, was transferred from a high-security U.S. prison “with the current status of said person and his location within U.S. territory unknown at this time.”
“The connection between the situation and location of Ovidio ‘G’; the participation of his brother Joaquín in the alleged kidnapping of Ismael ‘N’; the violence with which it was carried out; as well as the obvious irregularities of the plane and the flight of the kidnapping are fundamental subjects of the investigation,” said the prosecution.
In late July, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons said Ovidio Guzman’s custody status had changed but did not specify what had happened. U.S. and Mexican officials have since said Ovidio remains in custody, but not necessarily in the same location.
Mexican Security Secretary Rosa Icela Rodriguez even indicated that there were indications that Ovidio could be acting as a collaborating witness.
US Ambassador Ken Salazar said in early August that “he is not on the streets, he is in prison.” “We are going to judge him in the way we do in the Department of Justice.”
The Mexican federal prosecutor’s office recalled that the plane in which the two drug traffickers allegedly flew to the United States had multiple registrations – including from Colombia – and some falsified, and that its “approach and landing in that country were authorized by the competent agencies of the U.S. government.”
Aside from the flight, the federal department is investigating a murder that allegedly took place in the same place where Zambada reported he had been kidnapped.
According to Zambada in a letter released by his lawyer, Joaquín Guzmán López summoned him to a meeting to mediate in a dispute between a powerful politician from Sinaloa, Héctor Cuén, and the governor of that state, Rubén Rocha, from the same party as the president of Mexico.
Upon arriving at the scene, he only saw Guzmán López and Cuén, who was killed shortly afterward, but the fact that the powerful 76-year-old boss, who had never set foot in a prison until now, saw the meeting as viable sparked an intense controversy over the cartel’s ties to the authorities, especially since “El Mayo” is considered by all experts to be the most influential boss in Sinaloa.
Governor Rocha denied any connection with the criminals, but the federal prosecutor’s office attacked the Sinaloa prosecutor’s office by accusing it of spreading false information about Cuén’s murder, which has already led to the resignation of its head. The federal prosecutor’s office is investigating all these irregularities and announced that it will summon the necessary public servants to testify. clarify the murder of Cuén.
The arrest of the drug lords, who have already appeared before U.S. courts and declared themselves innocent, has put Mexico and its collaboration with the United States in a delicate situation, because the government of Mexican Andrés Manuel López Obrador did not find out about the arrests until after the events.
López Obrador, who has supported a security policy based on the motto “Hugs, not bullets” since coming to power in 2018, has long considered any US intervention in Mexico an affront and called on Washington to change its policy of arresting major drug lords because, in his opinion, that does not end organized crime.
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