US arrests of Mexican drug lords could bring fresh charges in home country

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexico is now investigating two drug lords arrested in the United States last month for their involvement in a slew of alleged crimes committed in their home country in order to get them stateside, federal authorities said on Sunday.

U.S. authorities captured Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, co-founder of the Sinaloa Cartel, and Joaquin Guzman Lopez, the son of Zambada’s former partner Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, in a stunning arrest late last month near El Paso, Texas.

The two have given differing accounts of how they ended up on a plane bound for the small-town airstrip, with Zambada saying on Saturday he was tricked by El Chapo’s son and ambushed.

Guzman, who is about 38 years old, meanwhile, has denied taking Zambada by force and called the handover a voluntary surrender after extended negotiations between the two drug traffickers and the U.S. government.

Mexico’s federal attorney general’s office said in a statement on Sunday that the crimes committed along the way could include murder, kidnapping and unlawful detainment of a person, illicit use of a flight, illicit use of aerospace facilities as well as immigration and customs violations.

Mexican authorities did not directly charge Zambada and Guzman on Sunday, but rather said the alleged crimes were part of the investigation the two were involved in.

Zambada, who is in his late seventies, on Saturday claimed in a statement sent by his lawyer that he was lured to a meeting with Guzman in the state of Sinaloa, the cartel’s heartland.

Sinaloa officials including Governor Ruben Rocha, and Hector Cuen, who had recently been elected as federal lawmaker for the upcoming congressional period, were also supposed to be present at the meet-up on a ranch outside Sinaloa’s state capital Culiacan, Zambada said.

Rocha said on Saturday that he was not in Mexico when the meeting occurred, while according to Zambada, Cuen was killed at the ranch.

Sinaloa authorities had previously said that Cuen was believed to have been killed in a carjacking at a Culiacan gas station.

The federal attorney general’s office on Sunday said Rocha would be asked to speak to state investigators, while it also requested to bring the state’s investigation into Cuen’s death under federal purview.

The office added that it had searched the ranch and a nearby landing strip which could have been used to take Zambada and Guzman to the U.S., as well as the airport outside El Paso.

(Reporting by Lizbeth Diaz; Writing by Kylie Madry; Editing by Diane Craft)