MEXICO CITY: Armed men entered through a window to ambush Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, the most elusive of the Sinaloa cartel’s leaders, who was then loaded onto a plane, drugged and spirited across the border to the United States, according to details revealed Monday in the plea hearing of the drug trafficker who abducted him.
Joaquin Guzman Lopez, the 39-year-old son of former Sinaloa cartel kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, pleaded guilty to two counts of drug trafficking and continuing criminal enterprise in federal court in Chicago after admitting his role in overseeing the transport of tens of thousands of kilograms (pounds) of drugs to the US
As part of that plea agreement, US prosecutors shared what had been one of the central questions in the hours and days immediately after Zambada fell into US hands in July 2024.
How did the wily drug capo who had stayed ahead of authorities for decades end up in the United States like a present tied with bow?
The plea agreement did not name Zambada, but in the days after his arrest, one of his lawyers shared a letter from him that explained he had been called to a meeting with Guzman Lopez and there he had been abducted.
