‘El Mayo’ Zambada: Assassination in Mexico occurred during kidnapping by El Chapo’s son
When a prominent politician in the Mexican state of Sinaloa was shot and killed there late last month, state authorities said he was a victim of an attempted car jacking. That did little to quell speculation in the media that the killing was somehow related to high-profile news the same day: the arrests near El Paso of two Sinaloa cartel leaders.
Now one of the drug lords, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, claims the killing of Héctor Melesio Cuén Ojeda occurred during an ambush by fellow trafficker Joaquín Guzmán López to force Zambada onto a plane bound for the U.S.
“I am aware that the official version being told by Sinaloa state authorities is that Héctor Cuen was shot in the evening of July 25th at a gas station by two men on a motorcycle who wanted to rob his pick-up truck,” Zambada said in a statement released Saturday by his lawyer. “That is not what happened. He was killed at the same time, and in the same place, where I was kidnapped.”
Zambada remains jailed in El Paso. His lawyer, Frank Perez, said he released the statement “to set the record straight and counter the false narratives.”
While early reports said Zambada, 76, had been tricked into boarding the plane — one version had him expecting to inspect clandestine airstrips used for drug smuggling — Perez claims the 38-year-old Guzmán López lured the older cartel figure into a trap by calling him to a meeting in the state capital of Culiacán “to help resolve differences” between Cuén Ojeda and Sinaloa’s governor, Rubén Rocha Moya.
Cuén Ojeda, a former mayor of Culiacán, ran for governor in 2016 but lost and had also served as rector of the Autonomous University of Sinaloa. Zambada said Cuén Ojeda’s dispute with Rocha was “over who should lead that institution.”
Rocha did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday.
Zambada and Guzmán López were taken into custody by U.S. federal agents after landing in a small Beechcraft King Air plane at a private airport in Santa Teresa, N.M., just outside El Paso.
Zambada has pleaded not guilty to federal charges related to his leadership role of the Sinaloa Cartel, a multibillion-dollar criminal enterprise responsible for smuggling illicit drugs around the globe. The cartel’s co-founder and longtime godfather known for having police, military, and political figures in his pocket, he had never been jailed previously despite spending decades as one of America’s most wanted fugitives.
There is growing evidence to suggest Ismael ‘El Mayo’ Zambada was hauled against his will from Mexico to El Paso in an effort by El Chapo’s son to curry favor with U.S. authorities.
The Justice Department is expected to transfer Zambada’s case to Brooklyn, where he also faces charges, to the same court that hosted the trial of his longtime partner, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, now serving a life sentence after a 2019 conviction.
El Chapo’s son, Joaquín Guzmán López, has pleaded not guilty to federal charges in Chicago, where he and his younger brother, Ovidio Guzmán López, are accused of being co-leaders of a cartel faction known as Los Chapitos known for manufacturing and exporting illicit fentanyl. Their lawyer, Jeffrey Lichtman, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday and has previously denied that the elder Guzmán López sibling had struck a deal to cooperate with U.S. authorities.
In his statement, Zambada said he went to a ranch and event center called Huertos del Pedregal just outside of Culiacán and arrived early for a meeting scheduled to start at 11:00 a.m. He said he also expected to see Iván Guzmán Salazar, an older half-brother of Guzmán López who remains a fugitive in Mexico and co-leads a Sinaloa cartel faction known as Los Chapitos.
“I saw a large number of armed men wearing green military uniforms who I assumed were gunmen for Joaquín Guzmán and his brothers,” Zambada said.
Zambada said he brought his own bodyguards, including two identified as José Rosario Heras López, a commander in the State Judicial Police of Sinaloa, and Rodolfo Chaidez, described as “a longtime member of my security team.”
“While walking toward the meeting area, I saw Héctor Cuen and one of his aides. I greeted them briefly before proceeding inside to a room that had a table filled with fruit,” Zambada said. “I saw Joaquín Guzmán Lopez, whom I have known since he was a young boy, and he gestured for me to follow him. Trusting the nature of the meeting and the people involved, I followed without hesitation. I was led into another room which was dark.”
Zambada continued: “As soon as I set foot inside of that room, I was ambushed. A group of men assaulted me, knocked me to the ground, and placed a dark-colored hood over my head. They tied me up and handcuffed me, then forced me into the bed of a pickup truck.”
Zambada said he was “subjected to physical abuse, resulting in significant injuries to my back, knee and wrists,” and driven to a landing strip “about 20 or 25 minutes away, where I was forced onto a private plane.”
He said that once on board the airplane, Guzmán López removed the hood and “bound me with zip ties to the seat.”
Photos taken by U.S. news media inside the plane after it landed showed a bag from the Mexican gas station chain Oxxo containing zip ties, along with cookies and snacks apparently purchased for the two-hour flight.
Zambada said the two bodyguards who were with him, including the state police official, have been missing since the ambush. The statement said Cuén Ojeda was killed at the scene and that his body was moved to another location.
“The notion that I surrendered or cooperated voluntarily is completely and unequivocally false,” Zambada said. “I was brought to this country forcibly and under duress, without my consent and against my will.”
Mexican officials have said the Guzmán López brothers reached an agreement to cooperate with U.S. authorities in hopes of receiving leniency in their cases, which could carry long prison sentences.
A spokesperson for the Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday morning.
State authorities in Sinaloa have said Cuén Ojeda was declared dead by doctors at a private clinic in central Culiacán on the night of July 25.
An autopsy showed Cuén Ojeda died from the impact of four bullets, one of which hit a major artery on his right leg.
Sinaloa Atty. Gen. Sara Bruna Quiñonez Estrada said in a statement last week that police are investigating “all possible causes” in Cuén Ojeda’s case and said they had not ruled out that the killing may have been connected to the Zambada case.
Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada’s lawyer denies that his client was merely tricked into boarding an aircraft to the U.S., saying the captured drug kingpin was “forcibly kidnapped.”
“The State Attorney General’s Office does not rule out any line of investigation … and continues to carry out all relevant investigative acts to clarify the facts and bring those responsible to justice,” Bruna said.
Zambada called for “the truth to come out” about the events of July 25.
“I call on the governments of Mexico and the United States to be transparent and provide the truth about my abduction to the United States and about the deaths of Héctor Cuen, Rosario Heras, Rodolfo Chaidez, and anyone else who may have lost their life that day,” Zambada said. “I also call on the people of Sinaloa to use restraint and maintain peace in our state. Nothing can be solved by violence. We have been down that road before, and everyone loses.”
Fausto Ernesto Corrales Rodríguez, the man who brought Cuén Ojeda to the Culiacán clinic, told officials that the shooting had occured in a failed carjacking attempt at a gas station.
Corrales Rodríguez, who is the son of another prominent Sinaloa politician, told officials that he and Cuén Ojeda had been fueling up their vehicle after spending the day on the outskirts of Culiacán, where they had planned to attend a meeting with several lawyers who, in the end, did not show up. Corrales said a gas station attendant was fueling his truck when two men on a motorcycle approached and ordered Cuén Ojeda out of the vehicle. He said that after Cuén Ojeda refused to comply, the men shot him and sped off.
Two gas station employees interviewed by journalists for Rio Doce, a local news site, said that they did not see a motorcycle approach the vehicle or see an altercation.
Ken Salazar, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, released a statement Friday in Spanish that said Guzmán López surrendered to U.S. authorities voluntarily and that “the evidence at the moment indicates El Mayo was brought against his will.”
Salazar said no U.S. resources were used in the “rendition” of Zambada: “It was not our plane, not our pilot, and not our people.”
Salazar said U.S. authorities did not receive a flight plan for the plane in advance, and that the plane took off somewhere in Sinaloa, contradicting previous statements from Mexican officials that said the craft disembarked from Hermosillo in the neighboring state of Sonora.
A prominent figure in Sinaloa, where his leadership of the university earned him the affectionate nickname “El Maestro,” Cuén Ojeda pivoted from an academic career to politics in 2010, later forming his own party. He also ran for senate and served as state secretary of health until 2022.
A statement released by Cuén Ojeda’s family remembered “his tireless commitment to work, his hand always outstretched to help others and the big heart that he always had open to those around him.”
The family’s statement made “a firm and respectful call” for the case to be investigated “free of any speculation to provide the justice that his work and legacy have left us in his time in this life and that he rightly deserves.”
Former prosecutors have told The Times that even if it’s true that Zambada was kidnapped and other crimes occurred as he was brought to the United States, it’s unlikely that the charges against him will be dismissed due to a violation of Mexico’s extradition treaty or for other procedural reasons.
In 2019, the Mexican government forced the return of Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos, a former defense secretary who was arrested on narco-corruption charges by the Drug Enforcement Administration in 2019 while traveling to the U.S. with his family.
Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, was furious about the general’s arrest, arguing the country’s sovereignty had been violated. The Justice Department ultimately dropped all charges and allowed Cienfuegos to return home. Mexican authorities later released evidence from the case and maintained the general was innocent.
In the Zambada case, López Obrador has taken a much different posture. With a president-elect from his own party, Claudia Sheinbaum, poised to replace him before the end of the year, the lame duck president called this week for Zambada and Guzmán López to reveal whatever they might know about political corruption in Mexico to U.S. investigators.
“If they can tell how much support was given to authorities, if they can inform on who was protecting them, all of that will help a lot, and also their agreements with the U.S. agencies… make it all transparent, that would help a lot,” López Obrador said at a news conference.
López Obrador and Sheinbaum were scheduled to appear Saturday in Sinaloa at the opening of a hospital. The president and president-elect are from the same political party as Sinaloa’s governor.
Amid eroding trust between the U.S. and Mexico on security issues, Mexican officials were caught off guard by the arrest of Sinaloa cartel leaders Ismael ‘El Mayo’ Zambada García and Joaquín Guzmán López.
Zambada, should he choose to cooperate with U.S. authorities, could potentially spill more than 40 years of secrets about who he and his cartel have corrupted in Mexico over the years. Twice during criminal trials in the United States, allegations have surfaced that the Sinaloa cartel made payments to an early and unsuccessful presidential campaign by López Obrador in 2006. The president, who was elected when he ran again in 2018, has vehemently denied any links to drug traffickers.
One former U.S. official who worked in Mexico when the Cienfuegos affair unfolded said if Zambada’s lawyer is hoping his client gets the same treatment as the general, he will likely be disappointed.
Tim Sloan, former head of the U.S Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives in Mexico, noted that López Obrador was once photographed shaking hands with El Chapo’s mother in Sinaloa, a gesture that did little to quiet speculation about the president’s sympathies.
Pushing to return Zambada, Sloan said, would be untenable: “It would be really bad politically for Mexico to go out on a limb for this guy who has been one of America’s most wanted for decades.”
Hamilton reported from San Francisco and Linthicum from Mexico City.
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