Image source, Reuters/DEA
- Author, Max Matza & Will Grant, Mexico correspondent
- Role, BBC News
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One of the world’s most powerful drug lords, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, leader of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, has been arrested by US federal agents in El Paso, Texas.
Zambada, 76, founded the criminal organisation with Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, who is currently jailed in the US.
Arrested with Zambada on Thursday was Guzman’s son, Joaquin Guzman Lopez, said the US justice department.
In February, Zambada was charged by US prosecutors with a conspiracy to make and distribute fentanyl, a drug more powerful than heroin that has been blamed for the US opioid crisis.
Citing Mexican and US officials, the Wall Street Journal reports that Zambada was tricked into boarding the plane by a high-ranking Sinaloa member following a months-long operation by Homeland Security Investigations and the FBI.
Believing that he was going to inspect clandestine airstrips in southern Mexico, Zambada was instead flown to a private airfield outside El Paso, Texas.
Lopez was also arrested alongside Zambada by federal agents when the plane landed.
Officials said Zambada was “lured” onto a private plane under “false pretences” by Lopez, the New York Times reports.
Mexico’s Security Minister Rosa Rodriguez said his government was made aware of the detention of both Zambada and Lopez by the US Government but that the Mexican authorities were not involved in the operation to apprehend them.
In a written statement on Thursday evening, US Attorney General Merrick Garland said the two men lead “one of the most violent and powerful drug trafficking organisations in the world”.
“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,” he added.
American prosecutors say the Sinaloa cartel is the biggest supplier of drugs to the US.
US authorities have previously noted that fentanyl is the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18 to 45.
The US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) had been offering a reward of up to $15m (£12m) for Zambada’s capture.
“In truth [Guzman] controlled nothing,” Guzman’s lawyer, Jeffrey Lichtman, told jurors. “Mayo Zambada did,” he claimed.
According to the US state department, Zambada is also the owner of several legitimate businesses in Mexico, including “a large milk company, a bus line and a hotel”, as well as real estate assets.
Alongside fentanyl charges, he is also facing charges in the US ranging from drug trafficking, murder, kidnapping, money laundering and organised crime.
In May, Zambada’s nephew – Eliseo Imperial Castro, who was known as “Cheyo Antrax” – was killed in an ambush in Mexico. He was also wanted by US authorities.
Zambada is arguably the biggest drug lord in the world and certainly the most influential in the Americas.
He had evaded authorities for decades, and as such, his arrest has come as a shock in Mexico.
In a statement, US Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said the Sinaloa cartel “pioneered the manufacture of fentanyl and has for years trafficked it into our country, killing hundreds of thousands of Americans and devastating countless communities”.
FBI director Chris Wray said the arrests are “an example of the FBI’s and our partners’ commitment to dismantling violent transnational criminal organisations like the Sinaloa Cartel,” he said.
As more information emerges, Zambada’s arrest will no doubt be heralded by President Joe Biden’s administration as one of the most significant operations by the DEA in years.
Zambada co-founded the Sinaloa cartel in the wake of the collapse of the Guadalajara cartel at the end of the 1980s.
While Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman was the public face of the organisation and the most notorious of the two men, many believed it was in fact El Mayo who was its real leader.
Not only ruthless, he was also innovative, creating and maintaining some of the earliest links with Colombian cartels to flood the US with cocaine and heroin.
And more latterly, fentanyl.
His leadership of the criminal empire has endured in the face of changing presidents in Mexico and the US, amid repeated anti-drug offensives from successive governments and constant efforts by his enemies in other drug-trafficking organisations to bring him down.
That is no mean feat in the violent, dangerous and treacherous underworld in which he has operated as an unassailable kingpin for many years.
Yet that extraordinary resilience appears to have run out in El Paso, Texas – a city blighted by the influx of the synthetic opioid, fentanyl, much of which was smuggled in by his organisation.
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