Longtime leader of powerful Mexican cartel pleads not guilty in New York to drug trafficking and murder charges

Ismael “El Mayo” Zambadaa powerful leader of Mexico's Sinaloa cartel, pleaded not guilty on Friday in a U.S. drug trafficking case against charges of conspiracy to commit murder and ordering torture.

Participation in a new York During the court hearing through a Spanish-speaking interpreter, Zambada answered a judge's standard questions about whether he understood various documents and procedures with a yes or no. When asked how he was feeling, Zambada said, “Good, good.”

His lawyers entered a not guilty plea on his behalf.

Outside court, Zambada's attorney Frank Perez said his client does not plan to make a deal with the government and the attorney expects the case to go to trial.

“It’s a complex case,” he said.

Zambada had been wanted by U.S. law enforcement for more than two decades and in US custody since July 25, when he landed in a private plane at an airport outside El Paso, Texas, accompanied by another fugitive cartel leader. Joaquin Guzman Lopezaccording to the federal authorities.

Zambada later said in a letter: he was kidnapped in Mexico and brought to the USA by Guzmán López, a son of the imprisoned Sinaloa co-founder Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.

Zambada's lawyer did not elaborate on these allegations on Friday.

U.S. Magistrate Judge James Cho ordered Zambada to be detained pending trial. His lawyers did not request bail, and U.S. prosecutors asked the judge to remand him in custody.

“He was one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful, drug lord in the world,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Francisco Navarro. “He was a co-founder of the Sinaloa cartel and was at the top of the drug trade for decades.”

Zambada, 76, was in a wheelchair during a court appearance in Texas last month. U.S. marshals supported him Friday as he entered a federal courtroom in Brooklyn. After the brief hearing, he appeared to accept some help getting out of the chair and then slowly but unassisted left the room.

Perez said after the hearing on Friday that Zambada was healthy and “in good spirits.”

There were sketch artists in the small courtroom, but other journalists could only follow the trial via video surveillance systems due to a lack of seats.

In court and in a letter to the judge, prosecutors said Zambada had led a massive and violent operation, with an arsenal of military weapons, a private security force that was almost like an army, and a squad of “sicarios” (hitmen) who carried out assassinations, kidnappings and torture.

During his bloody term in office, he ordered, among other things, the murder of his own nephew a few months ago, the public prosecutor's office said.

“A prison cell in the United States is the only thing that can stop the defendant from committing further crimes,” Navarro said.

Zambada also pleaded not guilty at an earlier court appearance in Texas. His next court appearance is scheduled for October 31.

According to authorities, Zambada and “El Chapo” Guzmán expanded the Sinaloa cartel from a regional syndicate into a huge manufacturer and smuggler of cocaine, heroin and other illegal drugs into the United States. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has described dismantling the cartel as one of the agency's top operational priorities.

Zambada was considered the group's strategist and dealmaker and a less conspicuous figure than Guzmán. Zambada had never been behind bars until his arrest in July.

“His day of reckoning in a U.S. court has come, and justice will follow,” Brooklyn-based U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said in a statement Friday.

Zambada’s surprise arrest sparked Fighting in Mexico between rival factions in the Sinaloa cartel. Several people were killed in shootings. Schools and businesses in Culiacán, the capital of Sinaloa, have been closed amid the fighting. Fighting is believed to be taking place between factions loyal to Zambada and those led by other sons of “El Chapo” Guzmán, who was sentenced to life in prison in the United States in 2019 for drug and conspiracy offenses.

It remains unclear why Guzmán López turned himself in to U.S. authorities and brought Zambada with him. Guzmán López is awaiting trial in Chicago on another drug trafficking charge, where he pleaded not guilty.

Strange twist in the saga of the cartel leaders

In a unexpected turnLast month, Mexican prosecutors said they would file 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 as a reward to sweeten his confession.

The federal prosecutor's office announced in a statement that “an arrest warrant for kidnapping” had been prepared against Guzmán.

But another charge was also cited in a section of the Mexican penal code that defines his act as treason. This section of the law states that treason is committed by those “who illegally kidnap a person in Mexico with the intention of handing him over to the authorities of another country.”

The reason for this clause was apparently the kidnapping of a Mexican doctor who was wanted for his alleged involvement in the torture and killing of Drug Enforcement Administration officer Kiki Camarena in 1985.

Nowhere in the statement is it mentioned that the younger Guzmán was a member of the Chapitos faction (the “little Chapos”) of the Sinaloa cartel, which consists of Chapo’s sons and smuggles millions of doses of the deadly opioid fentanyl into the United States, resulting in about 70,000 overdose deaths each year. According to a 2023 U.S. Department of Justice indictment, the Chapitos and their cartel members used corkscrews, electric shocks and hot chilies to torment their rivals while some of their victims were “thrown dead or alive to the tigers to be eaten.”

El Chapo, the founder of the Sinaloa cartel, is serving a life sentence in a maximum security prison in Colorado after convicted in 2019 on charges including drug trafficking, money laundering and weapons offenses.

Last year El Chapo sent an “SOS” message to the Mexican president, claiming that he had been subjected to “psychological torture” in prison.