claims of cross-border kidnapping, murder and political intrigue swirl around his arrest. But there are many gaps in the story, and few official details — fueling mistrust, analysts say, between US and Mexican authorities.
Zambada, 76, co-founded the powerful Sinaloa drug cartel with Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman in the 1990s.
He escaped capture for much of his life despite a US reward of $15 million for his capture.
Then, seemingly out of the blue, Zambada was detained on July 25 with El Chapo’s son, Joaquin Guzman Lopez, after they landed in the United States on a private plane.
Zambada’s lawyer and the US ambassador to Mexico have claimed he was taken against his will.
In a statement issued after the arrest, Zambada said Guzman Lopez had invited him to a meeting at a ranch outside Culiacan, Mexico, on July 25.
There, he claimed, he was led into a dark room and “ambushed,” handcuffed and bundled into a pickup truck with a hood over his head.
He said he was driven to a nearby landing strip and “forced onto a private plane,” which landed, according to Zambada, in El Paso, Texas — though a US official says it landed in Santa Teresa, New Mexico.
Adding to the mystery, two of Zambada’s bodyguards disappeared during the operation, Zambada said — one of them the police chief of Mexico’s Sinaloa state.
“When I read the statement it sounded like a novel,” former DEA agent Mike Vigil told AFP.
– Politician ‘murdered’ –
The United States and Mexico have both denied involvement in Zambada’s capture, though Mexico City has alluded to conversations between Guzman Lopez and US officials.
But Zambada has sought to draw in Mexican officials, saying he had been on his way to meet the governor of Sinaloa state, Ruben Rocha — a supporter of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
Guzman Lopez, Zambada said, had asked him to mediate in a conflict between Rocha and opposition lawmaker Hector Cuen.
Zambada then claimed Cuen was “murdered” at the same place he was ambushed, while he was there.
But on Monday, the Sinaloa prosecutor’s office released video footage allegedly showing Cuen’s murder — on July 25, but in a robbery at a gas station in Culiacan.
Rocha, for his part, has denied any links to the Sinaloa Cartel and said he was in Los Angeles on the day in question.
Lopez Obrador and Mexico’s new president-elect, Claudia Sheinbaum, have backed up his claim.
On Thursday, August 15th, the Mexican attorney general’s office said it would charge anyone involved in Zambada’s “illegal” handover with “treason.”
