CNN
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Joaquin Guzmán Lopez, the son of former Sinaloa Cartel boss Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán, pleaded not guilty to drug, money laundering and firearms charges in federal court in Chicago on Tuesday, just days after being taken into custody by the U.S. government in a shocking arrest riddled with international betrayal and intrigue.
Guzman Lopez, known as “Chapitos,” or one of El Chapo’s sons, faces the death penalty, his lawyer, Jeffrey Lichtman, confirmed to reporters after the trial.
Guzman Lopez, wearing an orange jumpsuit and ankle chain, told the court he was being treated for thyroid and high blood pressure problems.
Guzman Lopez was indicted by a federal grand jury in Illinois on drug, money laundering and firearms charges, according to a Department of Justice statement last year.
The court appearance came after Guzman Lopez, 38, and the cartel’s alleged co-founder, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, were arrested by U.S. authorities in El Paso, Texas, on Thursday. They face multiple charges for leading the criminal activities of what is considered one of the world’s most powerful and violent drug trafficking organizations.
Zambada, 76, made his initial appearance in federal court Friday morning in El Paso where he pleaded not guilty to all charges and is being held without bail on seven federal criminal counts, including continuing criminal enterprise and money laundering. Zambada is scheduled to appear in the same court on Thursday for a status briefing, according to court documents.
US law enforcement officials told CNN that the arrest came after Guzman Lopez orchestrated Zambada’s arrest by deceiving him into thinking the pair were flying to northern Mexico to look at real estate, but in fact their small private plane landed north of the border near El Paso, where US authorities were waiting on the tarmac, authorities said.
But Zambada’s lawyers said the case was a violent kidnapping, not a fraud, in a phone conversation and in a statement to CNN on Sunday.
“Joaquin Guzman Lopez forcibly kidnapped my client. He was ambushed by six men in military uniform and Joaquin, who threw him to the ground and handcuffed him. His feet were tied and a black bag was placed over his head,” attorney Frank Perez said in a statement.
“He was then thrown into the back of a pickup truck and taken to the tarmac, where Joaquin tied his legs to a seat and forced him onto an airplane where he was brought against his will to the United States. The only people on the plane were the pilot, Joaquin, and my client.”
The Mexican president called on the United States to provide specifics about what happened.
“The US government must issue a full report, not just a general statement,” President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said last Friday. “There must be transparency.”
At a press conference on Monday, he said Mexico should be trusted.
“We have nothing to hide. Nothing. We remain steadfast in our belief that we have no collusion with anyone in Mexico or abroad, and the public should know that,” he said.
The cartel is one of the world’s most powerful drug trafficking organizations and is believed to have smuggled huge amounts of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and fentanyl into the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration Administrator Anne Milgram said the arrests “strike at the heart of the cartels trafficking the majority of the drugs that are killing people across America, including fentanyl and methamphetamine.”
A law enforcement source familiar with the situation told CNN that US authorities were hesitant to brief Mexican authorities in advance for fear of compromising the operation, and details of the operation were kept tightly under wraps within the US government until Zambada and Guzman Lopez were captured, the sources said.
A short history of the cartels and their leaders
The Sinaloa Cartel was founded in the late 1980s and was led by El Chapo, who escaped from Mexican prisons twice and was detained by Mexican authorities in 2016.
The cartels are accused of playing a key role in Mexico’s long-running drug war, which has claimed tens of thousands of lives and contributed to continuing high levels of violence across the country.
A Congressional Research Service report estimated that in the early 2010s the cartel controlled roughly 40-60 percent of Mexico’s drug trade, raking in as much as $3 billion in annual profits.
El Chapo was extradited to the United States in 2017 and is serving a life sentence in a US federal prison after being convicted of engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, drug trafficking, money laundering and murder conspiracy.
Since then, experts believe the cartel has faced several challenges, including fragmentation into factions led by Zambada and Guzman’s sons and the rise of rival cartels.
FBI Director Christopher Wray said both Zambada and Guzman Lopez “eluded investigation for decades.”
Zambada was indicted by a grand jury in northern Illinois in 2009 and faces various criminal charges, according to the State Department. In 2021, the U.S. increased the reward for information leading to his arrest to $15 million.
“Ismael Mario Zambada Garcia is the longtime leader of the Zambada Garcia faction of the Sinaloa Cartel,” according to the U.S. State Department. “Zambada Garcia is unique in that he has operated as an international drug trafficker his entire adult life and has never served time in prison.”
Meanwhile, El Chapo’s sons are accused of “repeated and persistent transportation of lethal amounts of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and fentanyl,” the Justice Department said last year.
Zambada’s son, Vicente Zambada Niebla, admitted to transmitting instructions for the murders and kidnappings during testimony at Guzmán’s 2018 trial. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison by a federal judge in Chicago in 2019. Prosecutors said in a May 2019 filing that Zambada began cooperating with the U.S. government in 2011.
