Former Mexican cartel kingpin Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada pleaded responsible Monday to U.S. drug trafficking prices, saying he was sorry for serving to to flood the U.S. with cocaine, heroin and different illicit substances and for fueling lethal violence in Mexico.
“I recognize the great harm illegal drugs have done to the people in the United States and Mexico,” he mentioned by a Spanish-language interpreter. “I apologize for all of it, and I take responsibility for my actions.”
Beneath the management of Zambada and Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, prosecutors say the Sinaloa cartel advanced from a regional participant into the biggest drug trafficking group on the earth.
In pleading responsible, Zambada acknowledged the extent of the Sinaloa operation, together with underlings who constructed relationships with cocaine producers in Colombia, oversaw the importation of cocaine to Mexico by boat and airplane and the smuggling of the drug throughout the U.S.-Mexico border. He acknowledged that individuals working for him paid bribes to Mexican police and navy commanders “so they could operate freely,” going all the way in which again to when the cartel was simply beginning out.
He traced his involvement within the unlawful drug enterprise to his teenage years, when he mentioned he planted marijuana for the primary time in 1969. He mentioned he went on to promote heroin and different medicine, however particularly cocaine and that from 1980 till final yr, he and his cartel have been chargeable for transporting at the least 1.5 million kilograms of cocaine, “most of which went to the United States.”
Zambada entered his plea in a Brooklyn federal courtroom, two weeks after prosecutors mentioned they wouldn’t search the dying penalty towards him. As an alternative, he is anticipating to be sentenced Jan. 13 to life in jail.
The 77-year-old pleaded responsible to at least one depend of racketeering conspiracy and one depend of operating a unbroken legal enterprise. He was arrested in Texas final yr.
Prosecutors say Zambada presided over a violent, extremely militarized cartel with a non-public safety pressure armed with highly effective weapons and a cadre of “sicarios,” or hitmen, that carried out assassinations, kidnappings and torture.
Guzmán was sentenced to life behind bars following his conviction in the identical federal courtroom in Brooklyn in 2019. His two sons, who ran a cartel faction, additionally face federal prices.
The Sinaloa cartel is Mexico’s oldest legal group, with varied incarnations relationship to the Nineteen Seventies. It’s a drug trafficking energy participant: A former Mexican cupboard member was convicted of taking bribes to assist the cartel.
Thought-about a superb negotiator, Zambada was seen because the cartel’s strategist and dealmaker, considered extra concerned in its day-to-day doings than the extra flamboyant Guzmán. Nonetheless, prosecutors have mentioned Zambada additionally was enmeshed within the group’s violence, at one level ordering the homicide of his personal nephew.
In courtroom Monday, he acknowledged the grave human toll of his drug commerce, together with deadly preventing between his armed guards and cartel rivals.
“These confrontations led to many deaths both of our enemies and of fighters on our side,” Zambada mentioned. “Many innocent people were also killed.”
As he concluded his eight-minute remarks, he apologized “to everybody who has suffered from my actions.”
U.S. regulation enforcement sought Zambada for greater than twenty years, however he was by no means arrested in any nation till he was taken into custody in Texas final yr. He had arrived in a non-public airplane with one among Guzmán’s sons, Joaquín Guzmán López. Guzmán López has pleaded not responsible to federal drug trafficking prices in Chicago; his brother, Ovidio Guzmán López, pleaded responsible final month.
Zambada has mentioned he was kidnapped in Mexico and brought towards his will to the U.S. He had usually been at odds with Guzmán’s sons, dubbed the Chapitos, a time period that interprets to “little Chapos.”
Zambada’s arrest touched off lethal preventing in Mexico between rival Sinaloa cartel factions, apparently pitting his loyalists towards backers of Guzmán’s sons.
