Longtime leader of powerful Mexico cartel pleads not guilty to drug trafficking and murder charges in New York
Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada, a powerful leader of Mexico's Sinaloa cartel, pleaded not guilty Friday in a U.S. drug trafficking case that accuses him of engaging in murder plots and ordering torture.
Participating in a New York court hearing through a Spanish-language interpreter, Zambada gave yes-or-no answers to a magistrate's standard questions about whether he understood various documents and procedures. Asked how he was feeling, Zambada said, "Fine, fine."
His lawyers entered the not-guilty plea on his behalf.
Outside court, Zambada attorney Frank Perez said his client wasn't contemplating making a deal with the government, and the attorney expects the case to go to trial.
"It's a complex case," he said.
Sought by U.S. law enforcement for more than two decades, Zambada has been in U.S. custody since July 25, when he landed in a private plane at an airport outside El Paso, Texas, in the company of another fugitive cartel leader, Joaquín Guzmán López, according to federal authorities.
Zambada later said in a letter that he was kidnapped in Mexico and brought to the U.S. by Guzmán López, a son of imprisoned Sinaloa co-founder Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán.
Zambada's lawyer did not elaborate on those claims Friday.
U.S. Magistrate Judge James Cho ordered Zambada detained until trial. His lawyers did not ask for bail, and U.S. prosecutors asked the judge to detain him.
"He was one of the most, if not the most, powerful narcotics kingpins in the world," Assistant U.S. Attorney Francisco Navarro said. "He co-founded the Sinaloa cartel and sat atop the narcotics trafficking world for decades."
Zambada, 76, used a wheelchair at a court appearance in Texas last month, and U.S. marshals steadied him Friday as he walked into a federal courtroom in Brooklyn. He appeared to accept some help getting out of a chair after the brief hearing, then walked out slowly but unaided.
Perez said after court Friday that Zambada was healthy and "in good spirits."
Sketch artists were in the small courtroom, but other journalists could observe only through closed-circuit video because of a shortage of seats.
In court and in a letter earlier to the judge, prosecutors said Zambada presided over a vast and violent operation, with an arsenal of military-grade weapons, a private security force that was almost like an army, and a corps of "sicarios," or hitmen, who carried out assassinations, kidnappings and torture.
His bloody tenure included ordering the murder, just months ago, of his own nephew, prosecutors said.
"A United States jail cell is the only thing that will prevent the defendant from committing further crimes," Navarro said.
Zambada also pleaded not guilty to the charges at an earlier court appearance in Texas. His next court appearance is scheduled for Oct. 31.
According to authorities, Zambada and "El Chapo" Guzmán built the Sinaloa cartel from a regional syndicate into a huge manufacturer and smuggler of cocaine, heroin and other illicit drugs to U.S. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has described defeating the cartel as one of the agency's top operational priorities.
Zambada has been seen as the group's strategist and dealmaker and a less flamboyant figure than Guzmán. Zambada had never been behind bars until his July arrest.
His "day of reckoning in a U.S. courtroom has arrived, and justice will follow," Brooklyn-based U.S. Attorney Breon Peace declared in a statement Friday.
Zambada's surprise arrest has touched off fighting in Mexico between rival factions in the Sinaloa cartel. Gunfights have killed several people. Schools in businesses in Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa, have closed amid the fighting. The battles are believed to be between factions loyal to Zambada and those led by other sons of "El Chapo" Guzmán, who was convicted of drug and conspiracy charges and sentenced to life in prison in the U.S. in 2019.
It remains unclear why Guzmán López surrendered to U.S. authorities and brought Zambada with him. Guzmán López is awaiting trial on a separate drug trafficking indictment in Chicago, where he has pleaded not guilty.
Strange twist in cartel leaders' saga
In an unexpected twist, last month Mexican prosecutors said they were bringing charges against Guzmán for apparently kidnapping Zambada. The younger Guzmán apparently intended to turn himself in to U.S. authorities, but may have brought Zambada along as a prize to sweeten any plea deal.
Federal prosecutors issued a statement saying "an arrest warrant has been prepared" against the Guzmán for kidnapping.
But it also cited another charge under an article of Mexico's criminal code that defines what he did as treason. That section of the law says treason is committed "by those who illegally abduct a person in Mexico in order to hand them over to authorities of another country."
That clause was apparently motivated by the abduction of a Mexican doctor wanted for allegedly participating in the 1985 torture and killing of Drug Enforcement Administration agent Kiki Camarena.
Nowhere in the statement does it mention that the younger Guzmán was a member of the Chapitos — "little Chapos" — faction of the Sinaloa cartel, made up of Chapo's sons, that smuggles millions of doses of the deadly opioid fentanyl into the United States, causing about 70,000 overdose deaths each year. According to a 2023 indictment by the U.S. Justice Department, the Chapitos and their cartel associates used corkscrews, electrocution and hot chiles to torture their rivals while some of their victims were "fed dead or alive to tigers."
El Chapo, the Sinaloa cartel's founder, is serving a life sentence in a maximum security prison in Colorado after being convicted in 2019 on charges including drug trafficking, money laundering and weapons-related offenses.
Last year, El Chapo sent an "SOS" message to Mexico's president, alleging that he has been subjected to "psychological torment" in prison.