Mexico City, Mexico – Mexico’s attorney general’s office announced Sunday that it has launched a treason investigation into the recent arrest by United States authorities of Mexican drug lords Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada and Joaquin Guzman López, leaders of the notorious Sinaloa cartel. .
Zambada, a co-founder of the Sinaloa cartel along with Guzman López’s father, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, was arrested in El Paso, Texas on July 25 after he was allegedly lured onto a plane under false pretenses by Guzman López. El Chapo is currently serving a life sentence in the US for drug trafficking and other charges.
Information about the drug lord’s arrest had been murky from the start. But a letter from Zambada released by his lawyer on July 10 said he had been tricked into boarding the plane in the belief that he would meet with a number of local Mexican politicians, including Sinaloa Governor Rubén Rocha Moya, a. member of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s ruling MORENA party.
While El Mayo sits in a Texas prison — awaiting transfer to New York to face drug trafficking, money laundering, conspiracy, murder and other charges — back in Mexico, the Attorney General has launched an investigation into anyone who might was involved in Zambada. suspected abduction and transfer to the US
According to the Associated Press, the investigation stems from an obscure criminal code that dates back to 1985, and was set after the extraordinary surrender of a doctor in Mexico who was involved in the torture of slain DEA agent Kiki Camarena.
The news agency reported that the code says treason is committed “by those who unlawfully abduct a person in Mexico in order to hand him over to the authorities of another country.”
The alleged kidnapping of El Mayo and the use of Mexican airspace to hand her over to US authorities reportedly prompted the Attorney General’s investigation, which is looking into possible crimes including “unlawful flight, unlawful use of airports, immigration and customs violations, kidnapping, treason, and any other applicable crime.”
The attorney general’s office has not announced any new investigations into El Mayo or the younger Guzman related to their criminal careers.
Governor Rocha Moya has denied Zambada’s claims of a planned meeting and claimed he was not in Sinaloa on the day of Zambada’s arrest. “They lied to him and if he believed them, he fell into a trap,” he said.
President López Obrador supported Rocha Moya and assured that Zambada’s comments could come from groups seeking to damage his government.
“Because they are upset, they don’t like the transformation, neither the conservatives, nor some who are used to feeling that they are the owners of the world,” López Obrador said.
