“I was kidnapped and brought to the United States by force and against my will,” said “El Mayo,” co-founder of the Sinaloa cartel, in his first statement since he was arrested on July 25 upon landing on U.S. soil. Zambada arrived in the company of the son of his fellow cartel member, Joaquín Guzmán López, one of the so-called “Chapitos.”
With his statement, sent through his lawyer Frank Pérez, “El Mayo” stated that he intends to clarify the “inaccurate information” that has appeared in the media in both the United States and Mexico, regarding the circumstances of his sudden arrest.
Zambada, 76, said that Joaquín Guzmán López, whom he has known “since he was a child,” asked him to attend a meeting to “help resolve differences between the political leaders” of his state.
It was an “ongoing dispute between Rubén Rocha Moya, governor of Sinaloa, and Héctor Melesio Cuen Ojeda, former federal deputy, mayor of Culiacán and rector of the Autonomous University of Sinaloa (UAS), over who should lead that institution,” it said.
Cuen Ojeda and Rocha Moya, as well as Iván Guzmán Salazar, a drug trafficker, were to participate in the meeting.
Read also: Emma Coronel: What jobs has the wife of “El Chapo” Guzmán had?
Cuen Ojeda was killed on July 25, according to authorities during an attempted robbery of his truck, but Zambada maintains that this was not the case. “They killed him at the same time and in the same place where they kidnapped me,” he says.
This morning, Mayo Zambada’s lawyer in the US, Frank Pérez, sent me a statement in Spanish, the same as the one my colleague shared in English @keegan_hamilton.
Everything he says is outrageous. Today, more than ever, the Mexican government must show a serious investigation and… pic.twitter.com/XR9GWAvGpp— Peniley Ramírez (@peniley_ramirez) August 10, 2024
Upon arriving at the meeting place, there was “a large number of armed men in green military uniforms who I assumed were gunmen for Joaquín Guzmán and his brothers,” Zambada describes.
Read more: “El Mayo” Zambada: the reason for his transfer to the court where “El Chapo” was tried
“A group of men assaulted me, threw me to the ground and placed a dark-colored hood over my head. They tied me up and handcuffed me, and then forced me into the back of a pickup truck,” he said. They then took him to a landing strip where they forced him to board a private plane that arrived in El Paso, Texas, about three hours later.
Nearly five decades of one of the world’s most powerful drug lords fleeing justice came to an end on U.S. soil.
#brought #force
