NEW YORK: The accused Mexican drug kingpin Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada is expected to make an initial appearance on Friday in the same New York courthouse where fellow Sinaloa cartel co-founder Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman was convicted five years earlier.
At the 10 a.m. EDT (1400 GMT) hearing before US Magistrate Judge James Cho in Brooklyn, Zambada will likely be asked to enter a plea to the drug trafficking, money laundering and weapons charges he faces.
Prosecutors will ask that Zambada, who is in his 70s, be jailed pending trial.
“The defendant has devoted his efforts over decades to growing, increasing, and enhancing the power of the Cartel — and his individual power and position in the Cartel after his partner El Chapo was captured,” the US Attorney’s office in Brooklyn wrote in a Thursday court filing.
Zambada was taken into custody on July 25 at a New Mexico airfield, along with one of Guzman’s sons, Joaquin Guzman Lopez, in a major coup for US law enforcement.
He was then taken to El Paso, Texas, where he pleaded not guilty in federal court to separate drug trafficking charges.
US District Judge Kathleen Cardone last week had him transferred to Brooklyn after the US Department of Justice asked that he face trial there first.
The Brooklyn case began in 2009, and includes allegations related to the trafficking of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid fueling an epidemic in the United States.
“El Chapo” Guzman is serving a life sentence at a maximum security prison in Colorado. His son has pleaded not guilty to drug trafficking charges in Chicago.
Shootouts this week in the western Mexican state of Sinaloa kindled fears that an intra-cartel war is about to break out in the wake of Zambada’s arrest.
Alleged Sinaloa cartel co-founder ‘El Mayo’ to be arraigned in New York
https://arab.news/vt5zn
Alleged Sinaloa cartel co-founder ‘El Mayo’ to be arraigned in New York
- Ismael ‘El Mayo’ Zambada will likely be asked to enter a plea to the drug trafficking, money laundering and weapons charges he faces
- Zambada was taken into custody on July 25 at a New Mexico airfield, along with one of Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman’s sons
Neighbors of alleged Bondi gunmen shocked by deadly rampage
SYDNEY: Like many people in Sydney, Glenn Nelson spent his Sunday evening watching television coverage of a deadly shooting on the city’s iconic Bondi Beach.
But stepping onto his front porch, flanked by neatly trimmed box hedges, he saw armed police cordoning off the street before raiding the house opposite — home of the two suspects who are alleged to have killed 15 people in Australia’s worst mass shooting in decades.
“I thought, ‘Okay, I’ll catch the rest in the morning,’ the next thing, the drama is out the front door,” he said in an interview on Monday, shortly after mowing his lawn.
Nelson and other neighbors said the family living across the street kept to themselves, but seemed like any other in the suburb of Bonnyrigg, a working-class, well-kept enclave with an ethnically diverse population around 36 km (22 miles) by road from Sydney’s central business district.
Local media named the two suspected gunmen as father and son Sajid and Naveed Akram.
Police have not named the suspects, but they said the older man, 50, was killed at the scene, taking the number of dead to 16, while his 24-year-old son was in a critical condition in hospital.
Police said the son was known to authorities and the father had a firearms license.
The Sydney Morning Herald spoke to a woman on Sunday evening who identified herself as the wife and mother of the suspects.
She said the two men had told her they were going on a fishing trip before heading to Bondi and opening fire on an event celebrating the Jewish festival of Hanukkah.
“I always see the man and the woman and the son,” said 66-year-old Lemanatua Fatu, who lives across the street.
“They are normal people.”
Until Sunday’s shooting, Bonnyrigg was an otherwise unremarkable neighborhood typical of Sydney’s sprawling Western suburbs.
It has significant Vietnamese and Chinese communities, along with many residents who were born in Iraq, Cambodia and Laos, according to government data.
The town center, a strip mall with a large adjoining car park, is flanked by a mosque, a Buddhist temple and several churches.
“It’s a quiet area, very quiet,” Fatu said. “And people mind their own business, doing their own thing — until now.”
Not much is currently known about the suspects’ backgrounds.
A Facebook post from an Arabic and Qur'an studies institute appearing to show one of the men was removed on Monday and no one answered the door at an address listed for it in the neighboring suburb of Heckenberg.
On Monday afternoon, as police took down their cordon, several people re-entered the house, covering their faces. They made no comment to the media and did not answer the door.
