“Full report” on Texas arrest of two leaders of Mexico’s powerful Sinaloa drug cartel, its president asks the US from Mexico André Manuel Lopez. Of the two, one is a co-founder of Ismail Sabada Garcia, also known as “El Mayo”, during an operation in which Mexico was not involved.
“The US government must present a full report, not just general statements, we must have information, there must be transparency,” López Obrador said during his daily press conference.
The capture operation
The two leaders of the multinational cartel were arrested when their private plane landed in Texas, on the US side of the Mexican border, after a brazen police operation, according to US media citing police sources.
Joaquin Guzmán López, son of notorious cartel leader Joaquín Guzmán Loera, or “El Chapo,” convinced “El Mayo” to board a plane that was supposed to be headed to southern Mexico, but the plane was actually heading north and landed in El Paso, United States, according to Fox News.
The son of “El Chapo,” the drug lord who co-founded the Sinaloa cartel and is currently serving a life sentence in the United States after being convicted in 2019, lured “El Mayo” onto the plane “under false pretenses,” according to senior U.S. officials cited by the New York Times.
The Ministry of Justice stated that the two men were taken into custody.
Both men face charges in the United States for their roles in manufacturing and trafficking fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid and “the deadliest drug threat our country has ever faced,” said U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland.
The arrest of “El Mayo” strikes “at the heart of the cartel responsible for most of the drugs, including fentanyl and methamphetamine, that kill Americans from ocean to ocean,” said Ann Milgram, head of the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
Sources: AMPE, AFP, Reuters