Joaquin’s son El Chapo Guzmán is the main suspect in the kidnapping that led to the capture of Ismael The May Zambada. This was announced on Wednesday by the Attorney General’s Office (FGR), announcing that an arrest warrant is now ready against Joaquín Guzmán López for the crimes of kidnapping and treason. In an unexpected turn of events, the Federal Public Ministry gave credibility to the letter published by El Mayo about his arrest and the murder of Héctor Cuén, a deputy elected by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, and rejected the version of events that had been given by state authorities about the homicide. “The Prosecutor’s Office itself located the property where the probable crimes of illegal deprivation of liberty, homicides, injuries and acts linked to forced disappearance took place, in which the aggression that led to the death of Héctor ‘N is linked,” it said in a statement.
On August 10, El Mayo claimed that Guzmán López, his godson, had betrayed him with the intention of handing him over to the United States. The ambush occurred after the capo was summoned to a meeting with Los Chapitos, Cuén and the governor of Sinaloa, Rubén Rocha Moya, according to this version. Zambada said that he greeted Cuén, whom he referred to as his “friend for many years,” at the Huertos del Pedregal ranch, on the outskirts of Culiacán, hours before being captured in the United States. “They killed him at the same time and in the same place where they kidnapped me,” said the founder of the Sinaloa Cartel. The Sinaloa Prosecutor’s Office, on the other hand, maintained that the politician died in an attempted robbery of his truck when he stopped to fill up with gasoline in the state capital. “If they told him that he was going to go, they deceived him,” said Rocha after being splashed by the scandal and denied having ties to organized crime.
The FGR stated that the places where the kidnapping is believed to have taken place had already been secured, as well as the vehicles that were used, and released photographs of the crime scene. The crime of treason is filed against Guzmán López for “the illegal deprivation of a person’s liberty in national territory to hand him over to the authorities of another country.” The statement does not mention that the place is the Huertos del Pedregal ranch, nor does it detail any specific location. The ministerial authorities, however, rejected the version of the state Prosecutor’s Office regarding Cuén’s murder. “The federal institution has managed to establish, with precision, that the information about what happened at a gas station in the municipality of Culiacán is not acceptable, nor does it have the reliable elements of proof that allow it to be taken into account, in the way it was presented,” they stated.
The Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office denounced last Thursday that the state prosecutor’s investigation into the murder of Cuén, former rector of the Autonomous University of Sinaloa and founder of the Sinaloense Party, was riddled with irregularities. The FGR stated that there were errors in the autopsy, that the crime scene had not been secured and that there were inconsistencies in the video that was presented at the beginning of last week to support the theory of robbery as the main motive for the crime. Sinaloa prosecutor Sara Bruna Quiñónez presented her “voluntary resignation” on Friday, a day after the statement was released. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has backed the findings of the FGR, which took on the case last week.
In another advance of the investigations, the FGR assured that it had already identified “with complete precision” the runway from which the plane in which El Mayo and Guzmán López traveled to the United States took off on July 25. The authorities, however, did not reveal the exact location of the place, but they did share photographs that show the dirt runway and a small plane, although no further context is given about the images. It is known, from the information shared by the United States, that it is in Sinaloa and not in Sonora, as was initially said.
Rocha said in an interview that he had already shared information with the FGR about his trip to California, his alibi for the day of the capture of El Mayo and the murder of Cuén, his main political adversary. The president insisted that he was on vacation and delved into the details that motivated his departure from Sinaloa, on a private plane belonging to businessman Jesús Vizcarra, according to the log that was leaked to the media. Deputies from the opposition National Action Party reported the state leader to the FGR this week for obstructing investigations into the murder. Rocha dismissed the complaint and said it was politically motivated.
“The federal police and ministerial investigations will continue until the corresponding files are duly integrated,” the FGR said. The statement suggests a drastic change in the course that the investigations had followed. El Mayo published his letter just one day after the United States gave its official version of what happened, stating that “Guzmán López turned himself in” and that “El Mayo was taken against his will.” Now, Zambada’s kidnapping is the main hypothesis behind his unexpected capture at a rural airport in New Mexico four weeks ago.
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