Ismael 'El Mayo' Zambada didn't know US investigators had exploited a rift in the Sinaloa cartel or that Guzman Lopez was helping with his capture, the official said.
Two top leaders of the Mexican Sinaloa drug cartel have been taken into custody, the Department of Justice announced Thursday.
Zambada boarded a plane with Guzman Lopez, believing they were inspecting property in Mexico near the US border, the law enforcement official said. Mexican officials were informed of the arrests during a phone call from the US Embassy in Mexico Thursday afternoon, Mexico's secretary of security, Rosa Icela Rodriguez, said Friday.
"Fentanyl is the deadliest drug threat our country has ever faced, and the Justice Department will not rest until every single cartel leader, member, and associate responsible for poisoning our communities is held accountable," Garland said. "Ismael Mario Zambada Garcia is the long-time leader of the Zambada Garcia faction of the Sinaloa Cartel. Zambada Garcia is unique in that he has spent his entire adult life as a major international drug trafficker, yet he has never spent a day in jail," according to the US State Department.
Notorious cartel boss Guzman, better known as "El Chapo," was arrested in Guatemala in 1993 on homicide and drug charges and extradited to Mexico. But he escaped Mexican prison in 2001, reportedly by bribing prison guards to smuggle him out in a laundry truck. He was arrested again in 2014, but escaped again, this time through a tunnel.
Fentanyl "was largely unheard of when founded the Sinaloa Cartel more than three decades ago and today is responsible for immeasurable harm," said Breon Peace, US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, in the indictment. He began cooperating with the US government in 2011, prosecutors said in a May 2019 filing. They said he aided authorities in helping target members of the Sinaloa Cartel and a rival gang, which led to the "charging of dozens of high-level targets and hundreds of their associates in indictments throughout the country," CNN previously reported.
El Chapo El Chapo Son El Mayo Zambada Guzman Lopez Ismael Mayo Zambada Ismael El Mayo Zambada Joaquin Guzman Lopez El Chapo El Mayo El Mayo Chapo Chapo Son Chapo Guzman 15099621
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