Accused Mexican drug lord Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada Garcia, who co-founded the Sinaloa cartel, will be tried in the same Brooklyn court where El Chapo was sentenced in 2019.
Two sources familiar with the case against the 76-year-old cartel leader confirmed that Zambada will be arraigned in Brooklyn Federal Court following his arrest last month in Texas.
Zambada and Joaquín Guzmán López, a son of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, were apprehended by US authorities after they landed in El Paso on July 25. He was lured to the small private plane and thought he was traveling somewhere else, the Associated Press reported.
IN a statement to CNN, Zambada’s lawyer blamed Chapo’s son for the arrest.
“Joaquín Guzmán López forcibly kidnapped my client. He was assaulted, thrown to the ground and handcuffed by six men in military uniforms and Joaquin. His legs were tied and a black bag was placed over his head,” said lawyer Frank Pérez in the statement.
“He was then thrown into the back of a pickup truck and taken to an airstrip. There he was forced onto a plane, his legs tied to the seat by Joaquin, and taken to the United States against his will. The only people on the plane were the pilot, Joaquín and my client .”
Zambada and Guzman “allegedly oversaw the trafficking of tens of thousands of pounds of narcotics into the United States, along with related violence,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said shortly after his arrest.
The US government offered a reward of up to 15 million dollars for information leading to Zambada’s capture.
El Chapo was convicted and sentenced to life plus 30 years in 2019, after a blockbuster trial in Brooklyn. The jury found that Chapo had smuggled more than 150 tons of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana into the United States while generating billions in profits and conspiring to commit murder.