Mexico suggests US made deal with Mexican drug lord to transfer his brother from prison

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Prosecutors in Mexico suggested Thursday that U.S. authorities cut a deal with a Mexican drug lord who turned himself and another capo in to have his brother transferred from a U.S. prison.

Mexico’s attorney general’s office also accused U.S. authorities of failing to respond to requests for information about the case. The office also said the small plane they both flew to the United States on in July had multiple registrations and identification numbers, some of which were false.

U.S. officials deny any involvement in the plot or the flight, saying they only learned of it after the plane took off from northern Mexico.

It was the latest chapter in the strange saga of two Mexican drug lords, one of whom allegedly kidnapped the other and flew him to an airport near El Paso, Texas.

The Mexican government has previously said it plans to charge Joaquín Guzmán López with treason, but not because he was a leader of the Sinaloa drug cartel founded by his father, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.

Instead, the Mexican Attorney General’s Office is charging the younger Guzmán with kidnapping Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, an older drug lord from a rival faction of the cartel, forcing him onto a plane and flying him north.

According to the agency, two of Zambada’s bodyguards, including a police officer, who disappeared after the kidnapping were believed to have been killed.

The younger Guzmán apparently wanted to turn himself in to U.S. authorities, but reportedly took Zambada as a prize to have his previously arrested half-brother, Ovidio Guzman, transferred from a U.S. prison.

Mexican prosecutors suggested this was true, saying that “the link between the (prison) status of Ovidio “G,” the participation of his brother Joaquin in the suspected kidnapping of Ismael (Zambada) … are the main areas of interest of the investigation.”

In late July, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons reported that Ovidio Guzman’s custody status had changed, but did not specify what had happened. U.S. and Mexican officials have since said that Ovidio remains in custody, but not necessarily in the same location.

Earlier this month, U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar said that Ovidio Guzman — a high-profile inmate who allegedly led the Sinaloa cartel’s efforts to produce and smuggle the synthetic opioid fentanyl — “is not on the streets.”

“He’s in prison,” Salazar said, “and we’re going to judge him the way the Justice Department does.”

Mexican prosecutors also alleged that the plane the two were reportedly flying in had multiple registrations, some of which were falsified, and that the “approach and landing of the aircraft in that country (the U.S.) was authorized by the competent authorities of the U.S. government.”

Mexican prosecutors also claimed that they had made a total of five requests to U.S. authorities for information about the flight, and that “there has been no response so far.”

The federal prosecutors’ statement also said they would question prosecutors, police officers and forensic investigators from the northern state of Sinaloa, home to the cartel of the same name, about their inspections of the walled recreation area where the kidnapping and killings took place.

Earlier, federal prosecutors accused their counterparts in Sinaloa of providing information that later turned out to be false.

Zambada has said that Guzmán, whom he trusted, invited him to the meeting to help smooth over a fierce political rivalry between two local politicians. Zambada was known for evading capture for decades because of his incredibly tight, loyal and sophisticated personal security apparatus.

The fact that he would consciously leave all that behind to meet with politicians means that Zambada considered such a meeting credible and feasible. So did the idea that Zambada, as leader of the oldest wing of the Sinaloa cartel, could act as an arbiter in the state’s political disputes.

The governor of Sinaloa state denies that he knew about the meeting where Zambada was kidnapped, nor did he attend it.

The whole affair is a source of embarrassment for the Mexican government, which only learned afterwards that the two drug lords had been arrested on American soil.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has long viewed any U.S. intervention as an insult and refused to confront Mexico’s drug cartels. He recently questioned the U.S. policy of detaining drug cartel leaders, asking, “Why don’t they change that policy?”