A Mexican drug kingpin arrested in the US last month will face trial in Brooklyn after a judge approved prosecutors’ request to move the case from Texas to the Big Apple.
Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, 76, co-founder of Mexico’s brutal Sinaloa drug cartel, was taken into custody July 25 alongside Joaquin Guzmán López, son of infamous jailed leader Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
Officials said the pair were lured onto a plane believing they were going to check out real estate in Mexico.
Instead, the aircraft landed in El Paso, Texas, where US Homeland Security agents were waiting to arrest the men on charges related to drug-trafficking linked to the deadly spread of fentanyl and methamphetamine, the Justice Department said.
“The old man got tricked,” one law enforcement source told The Los Angeles Times.
But Zambada disputes claims he was tricked, insisting he was ambushed at a meeting in Culiacan, Mexico and put on the three-hour flight to the US.
“To the contrary, I was kidnapped and brought to the US forcibly and against my will,” Zambada wrote in a letter from prison that was released by his lawyer and obtained by CBS News.
Zambada faces charges across multiple US jurisdictions, including in Brooklyn federal court, where El Chapo was sentenced to life in prison in 2019 after being convicted of numerous drug and conspiracy offenses.
The kingpin’s Brooklyn charges include running a continuing criminal enterprise, murder conspiracy, drug offenses and other crimes.
The judge’s order mandates Zambada be scheduled for an initial court appearance “without further delay” but a date was not immediately known.
A spokesperson for the Eastern District of New York said he had no comment on the filing.
