US prosecutors said Wednesday they are considering a possible plea deal Ismael “El Mayo” Zambadathe Mexican drug lord who was arrested last summer and whose son could testify against him if he goes to trial.
The US attorney, Francisco Navarro, said that the application was talking to Zambada, a the head of Mexico's powerful Sinaloa cartelhas not borne fruit so far, but prosecutors want to keep trying. A judge scheduled an April 22 hearing for the renewal.
Zambada's lead attorney, Frank Perez, declined to comment on the negotiations.
It's common for prosecutors and defense attorneys to explore whether they can reach a deal, and the negotiations don't necessarily go anywhere.
Zambada was an attentive and active participant in Wednesday's hearing, which focused on whether he wanted Perez to continue representing him even as he also represented a government witness in the case — Zambada's son Vicente Zambada.
“I don't want another lawyer,” the father said through a court interpreter. “I want him, even though this could be a conflict if he represents me and my son.
Jane Rosenberg/REUTERS
The younger Zambada was charged and took a plea deal in the long-standing and growing US charges against Sinaloa cartel figures. He testified for the government at the trial of the cartel's infamous and now imprisoned co-founder, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
Working with Guzmán, Ismael Zambada kept a lower profile and was seen as focusing more on the smuggling business than actual brutality, serving as a strategist and dealer involved in daily operations, authorities say.
At Guzmán's trial, Vicente Zambada described how his father and Guzmán ran the cartel together. At one point, he described corrupt Mexican politicians asking if the syndicate could help them put 100 tons of cocaine in an oil tanker.
“They wanted to know if my father and Chapo could supply that much coke,” he told a jury in the same Brooklyn federal courthouse where his father is on trial. Another time , Vicente Zambada recalled hearing a drug gang leader say he wanted to kill Ismael Zambada and Guzman to avenge a botched hit.
Prosecutors said in a court document last month that the son could be called to testify against his father, which could be a conflict of interest for Perez. For example, he would be hindered in cross-examining the son because of the loyalty of the two clients.
Sometimes defense attorneys have a conflict of interest with a client, and federal courts have defined the steps judges should take to deal with these situations. These include an independent lawyer to advise defendants as they consider what to do about the potential conflict. Zambada had one at Wednesday's hearing.
Zambada said he understood that there could be problems with Perez representing himself and his son – “for example, that he has to hide from me information that he got from Vicente.”
U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan eventually agreed that Perez could stay on the case, noting that Ismael Zambada also has other attorneys who could handle any part of it involving his son. .
Law enforcement had been searching for the elder Zambada for years surprise arrest in July at an airport near El Paso, Texas, after arriving on a private plane with one of Guzmán's sons, Joaquín Guzmán López. He was also wanted by US authorities.
Zambada has claimed that he was kidnapped in Mexico and dragged to the US by Guzmán López, whose lawyer denies the allegations. Joaquín Guzmán López and his brother Ovidio are in plea negotiations with the US government, their lawyers said this month in a Chicago courtroom.
Following the July arrest and Zambada's kidnapping allegations, A terrible fight broke out in Mexico between a cartel group loyal to him and another linked to the “Chapitos,” sons of Guzmán.
The Chapitos have used corkscrews, electrocution and hot chiles to torture their rivals while some of their victims were “fed dead or alive to tigers,” according to a lawsuit released by the US Department of Justice.
In recent months, bodies have appeared throughout Sinaloa, often left out on the streets or in cars by either hats on their heads or pizza slices or boxes wrapped with knives. The pizzas and sombreros have become informal symbols for the warring cartel groups, reinforcing the brutality of their war.
The series of events also strained relations between Mexico and the United States.
First, there was the president of Mexico at the time, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and current President Claudia Sheinbaum he laid part of the blame for the bloodshed at Washington's feet, saying that the US is arresting a harmless problem.
The outgoing US ambassador to Mexico, Ken Salazar, responded that it was “incomprehensible” to say that Washington was to blame for the cartel wars. He later said that the Mexican government had stopped cooperating with Washington on fighting cartels and was keeping its head in the sand about police violence and corruption.
Mexico's foreign ministry responded by expressing “surprise” in a formal note to the US embassy about the ambassador's statement.
