Longtime Mexican drug cartel leader pleads not guilty to drug and murder charges in New York

Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, the powerful longtime leader of Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel, pleaded not guilty Friday in New York on a 17-count indictment accusing him of narcotics trafficking and murder.

Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, the powerful longtime leader of Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel, pleaded not guilty Friday in New York on a 17-count indictment accusing him of narcotics trafficking and murder. Participating through a Spanish-language interpreter, Zambada didn’t speak, except to give brief answers to a judge’s standard questions about whether he understood various documents and procedures and how he was feeling — “fine, fine” he said. His lawyers entered the not-guilty plea on his behalf. Sought by American law enforcement for more than two decades, Zambada has been in US custody since July 25, when he landed in a private plane at an airport outside El Paso in the company of another fugitive cartel leader, Joaquín Guzmán López, according to federal authorities. Zambada later said in a letter that he was forcibly kidnapped in Mexico and brought to the US by Guzmán López, the son of the imprisoned Sinaloa co-founder Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. US Magistrate Judge James Cho ordered Zambada detained until trial. His lawyers did not ask for bail and US prosecutors in Brooklyn had asked the judge to detain him. Zambada sat quietly as he listened to the interpreter. Leaving court, he appeared to accept some assistance getting out of a chair and then walked out slowly but unaided.