Mexican cartel boss Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada in plea talks with US, stands with lawyer who represented son

U.S. prosecutors said Wednesday they are discussing a potential plea deal Ismael “El Mayo” Zambadathe long-elusive Mexican drug lord who was arrested last summer and whose son could testify against him if he goes to trial.

Assistant US Attorney Francisco Navarro said the plea talks with Zambada, a head of the powerful Sinaloa cartel in Mexicothey have not borne fruit so far, but prosecutors want to keep trying. A judge scheduled a hearing on April 22 for an adjournment.

Zambada’s lead attorney, Frank Perez, declined to comment on the discussions.

It is common for prosecutors and defense attorneys to discuss whether they can reach an agreement, and the discussions do not necessarily go anywhere.

Zambada was an attentive and active participant during Wednesday’s hearing, which focused on whether he wanted Perez to continue representing him while also representing a potential government witness in the case — Zambada’s son, Vicente Zambada .

“I don’t want a different lawyer,” the father said through a court interpreter. “I want it, even though it might be a conflict if it represents me and my son.”

The younger Zambada was charged himself and made a plea deal in the long-running and sprawling US trials of 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 alongside Guzmán, Ismael Zambada kept a lower profile and was seen as focusing more on the smuggling business than the extremes of brutality, serving as a strategist and negotiator who engaged in operations of every day, authorities say.

At Guzmán’s trial, Vicente Zambada recounted how his father and Guzmán ran the cartel together. At one point, he described corrupt Mexican politicians asking if the syndicate could help ship 100 tons of cocaine in an oil tanker.

“They wanted to know if my father and Chapo could supply that amount of coke,” she told a jury in the same Brooklyn federal court where her father is being prosecuted. At another point, Vicente Zambada recalled hearing a rival drug gang leader say he wanted to kill Ismael Zambada and Guzmán to avenge a botched hit.

Prosecutors said in a court filing 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 prevented from questioning the son because of the loyalty he owes to these two clients.

Defense attorneys sometimes have a potential conflict of interest regarding a client, and federal courts have outlined the steps judges should take to address such situations. Among them is to have an independent lawyer to advise the accused as to what to do about the possible conflict. Zambada had one at Wednesday’s hearing.

Zambada said he understood that there could be problems with Perez representing him and his son – “for example, that he will have to hide the information he obtained from Vicente from me.”

U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan finally agreed that Perez could stay on the case, noting that Ismael Zambada also has other lawyers who could handle any part of it regarding his son.

Law enforcement searched for the elder Zambada for years before his surprising 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 too was wanted by the American authorities.

Zambada said he was kidnapped in Mexico and transported to the United States by Guzmán López, whose lawyer denies these claims. Joaquín Guzmán López and his brother Ovidio are in plea negotiations with the US government, their lawyers said this month in a Chicago courtroom.

After the July arrests and Zambada’s kidnapping allegations, a terrifying fight broke out in Mexico between a cartel faction loyal to him and another linked to the “Chapitos”, Guzmán’s sons.

The Chapitos used corkscrews, electrocution and hot chiles they torture their rivals while some of his victims were “fed dead or alive to the tigers,” according to an indictment released by the United States Department of Justice.

In recent months, bodies have appeared throughout Sinaloa, often left stranded on the streets or in cars with or hats on his head or pizza slices or boxes stuck on them with knives. Pizzas and sombreros have become informal symbols for warring cartel factions, underscoring the brutality of their war.

The chain of events also strained relations between Mexico and the United States.

First, the president of Mexico at the time, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and current President Claudia Sheinbaum he laid some of the blame for the bloodshed at Washington’s feet, saying US arrests had fueled the problems.

The outgoing US ambassador to Mexico, Ken Salazar, responded that it was “incomprehensible” to suggest that the cartel wars were Washington’s fault. Later, he said that the Mexican government had stopped cooperating with Washington in the fight against the cartels and was putting its head in the sand because of police violence and corruption.

Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs reacted by expressing “surprise” in a formal note to the US embassy about the envoy’s statement.