(Mexico City) Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Friday asked the United States for a “complete report” on the arrest Thursday in Texas of two leaders of the powerful Sinaloa cartel, including its co-founder Ismael Zambada Garcia, alias “El Mayo,” during an operation in which Mexico did not participate.
“The U.S. government must provide a complete report, not just general statements, there must be information, there must be transparency,” Lopez Obrador demanded at his daily press conference.
The two leaders of the cartel with many international ramifications were arrested as their private plane landed in Texas, on the American side of the border with Mexico, following a daring sting operation, according to American media citing police sources.
Also read “Mexican Sinaloa Cartel | US Authorities Announce Arrest of Two Leaders”
Joaquin Guzman Lopez, son of notorious cartel leader “El Chapo,” convinced “El Mayo” to board a plane supposedly bound for 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,” a drug trafficker who co-founded the Sinaloa cartel and is currently serving a life sentence in the United States after his conviction in 2019, lured “El Mayo” onto the plane “under false pretenses,” according to senior U.S. officials cited by the New York Times.
The Justice Department said the two men were placed under arrest.
They are both facing prosecution in the United States for their alleged role in the manufacture and trafficking of fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid and “the deadliest drug threat our country has ever faced,” said US Attorney General Merrick Garland.
The arrest of “El Mayo” strikes “at the heart of the cartel that is responsible for the majority of drugs, including fentanyl and methamphetamine, that are killing Americans from coast to coast,” said Anne Milgram, the head of the DEA, the federal Drug Enforcement Agency.