Sinaloa Cartel co-founder pleads not guilty after stunning US capture

The co-founder of Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel pleaded not guilty to US drug charges on Friday after being flown to Texas in a scheme allegedly orchestrated by another top leader of the notorious trafficking ring.

Ismael Zambada Garcia, known as "El Mayo," co-founder of the cartel, and Joaquin Guzman Lopez, a son of its other co-founder, were taken into custody in El Paso, Texas, on Thursday, US officials said.

Zambada, 76, who faces charges of drug trafficking, money laundering and conspiracy to commit murder, appeared before a US magistrate judge shortly after his stunning arrest and entered a plea of not guilty, according to court documents.

He was remanded in custody and is to appear in court again on July 31.

President Joe Biden welcomed the arrests of the two cartel leaders and said the United States "will continue doing everything we can to hold deadly drug traffickers to account and to save American lives."

"Too many of our citizens have lost their lives to the scourge of fentanyl," he said.

The Mexican authorities said they were not involved in the operation, which President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador described as "an important advance in the fight against drug trafficking."

Lopez Obrador said he expected a "complete report" from the United States on how the men were taken into custody. "There must be transparency," he said.

The situation was calm on Friday in Sinaloa's state capital, Culiacan, where furious gunmen went on a rampage in 2023 after the arrest and extradition to the United States of Ovidio Guzman Lopez, another son of Sinaloa co-founder Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.

El Chapo was convicted of drug charges in New York in 2019 and is serving a life sentence in a maximum security prison.

The Mexican defense ministry sent 200 members of the special forces to the cartel heartland on Friday to reinforce security.

US media quoted law enforcement sources as saying that the arrests were the result of a sting operation in which Zambada was unwittingly lured across the border by Guzman Lopez, who is in his mid- to late 30s and faces US charges of trafficking cocaine, heroin and other drugs.

- 'Internal battle' -

Guzman Lopez is one of El Chapo's four sons; they are known collectively as Los Chapitos, or "The Little Chapos."

According to a US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) report released in May, Los Chapitos were engaged in an "internal battle" against Zambada, their father's former partner.

CNN, citing a US law enforcement official, said the US authorities exploited the "rift" in the cartel to capture Zambada.

The official said Zambada boarded a plane with Guzman Lopez for a flight that he believed was intended to inspect property in Mexico near the US border. Instead, the plane landed in El Paso, where both men were arrested.

The Wall Street Journal said the operation had been in the works for months.

NBC News said Guzman Lopez may have decided to surrender and was "under the impression he would receive more favorable treatment if he brought with him another major cartel figure."

- 'Enormous blow' -

DEA chief Anne Milgram said Zambada's arrest "strikes at the heart of the cartel that is responsible for the majority of drugs, including fentanyl and methamphetamine, killing Americans from coast to coast."

And the capture of El Chapo's son marks "another enormous blow to the Sinaloa Cartel," Milgram said.

The low-profile Zambada, who has never served time in prison, had cultivated close connections with Mexico's federal police and military and has been wanted in the United States for decades.

His son, Vicente Zambada Niebla, was arrested by the Mexican authorities in 2013 and extradited to the United States.

Zambada Niebla testified against "El Chapo" at his 2019 trial and revealed details of the cartel's smuggling operations, claiming his father had a "bribery budget" of $1 million per month, much of it going to high-level Mexican public officials.

The US State Department had offered a reward of $15 million for the arrest of Zambada and $5 million for the capture of Guzman Lopez.

Victims of the cartels' ultra-violent turf wars include rival gang members, security personnel and journalists, among more than 450,000 people murdered since the government launched a military offensive against drug cartels in 2006.

The United States saw more than 107,000 drug overdose deaths in 2023, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Fentanyl accounted for about 70 percent of them.