NEW YORK — Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, a powerful longtime leader of Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel, pleaded not guilty Friday to U.S. narcotics-trafficking and murder charges.
Participating in a court hearing through a Spanish-language interpreter, Zambada didn’t speak, except to give yes-or-no answers to a judge’s standard questions about whether he understood various documents and procedures and how he was feeling — “fine, fine,” he said. His lawyers entered the not-guilty plea on his behalf.
Sought by American 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 in the company of another fugitive cartel leader, Joaquín Guzmán López, according to federal authorities.
Zambada later said in a letter that he was forcibly kidnapped in Mexico and brought to the U.S. by Guzmán López, a son of imprisoned Sinaloa co-founder Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
U.S. Magistrate Judge James Cho ordered Zambada detained until trial. His lawyers did not ask for bail, and U.S. prosecutors in Brooklyn 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 sat quietly as he listened to the interpreter. Leaving court after the brief hearing, he appeared to accept some help getting out of a chair, then walked out slowly but unaided.
Sketch artists were in the small courtroom, but all 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, the 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 during an earlier court appearance in Texas.
His 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 now awaiting trial on a separate drug-trafficking indictment in Chicago, where he has pleaded not guilty to drug trafficking and other charges in federal court.
