Ismael Zambada García, a founder of the Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel, appeared in court in Texas on Thursday, one week after he was kidnapped by his former business partner’s son and flown across the U.S. border into the hands of U.S. agents. The appearance in El Paso for an initial hearing was routine as a legal matter, but it represented a consequential moment in the history of the drug war, the New York Times reports. It was the first time that Zambada García, a wily drug lord who had managed to evade capture for decades, was brought before a judge to be held accountable for what prosecutors call a nearly 50-year career of drug dealing, murder and corruption. Last week, that career was cut short when Zambada García, 76 and known as El Mayo, was lured from one of his mountain hide-outs to the Mexican city of Culiacán, as a stronghold for the cartel.
He believed he helping a son of his former partner in crime, the jailed kingpin known as El Chapo, mediate a dispute between two local politicians. Instead, he was ambushed, muscled onto a plane and flown across the border to a small regional airport near El Paso. Zambada García, who recently had knee replacement surgery, showed up at the hearing in front of Judge Kathleen Cardone in a wheelchair and wearing a prison jumpsuit. His abduction last Thursday by El Chapo’s son, Joaquín Guzmán López, was a betrayal worthy of a narco thriller. Security analysts say it could set off a bloody war among the rival factions of the Sinaloa cartel. One of those factions is run by El Chapo’s two oldest sons — Iván and Jesús Alfredo Guzmán Salazar — while another is led by one of Zambada García’s sons, Ismael Zambada Sicairos.
Comments