Since drug trafficker Ismael ‘El Mayo’ Zambada was arrested in July of last year in the United States (US), the Mexican government has requested his extradition on at least four occasions, but none of them have been attended to.
Last Tuesday, the head of the Attorney General’s Office (FGR), Alejandro Gertz Manero, announced that an extradition procedure was initiated before the North American authorities, when Joe Biden was still president. This was with the aim of the Sinaloa drug lord returning to Mexico, where he has three arrest warrants in force.
“We have insisted on four occasions before the previous administration of the North American government and we have had no response,” Gertz Manero reported at Claudia Sheinbaum’s presidential conference.
In contrast, Juan Manuel Delgado —one of the legal advisors of El Mayo Zambada in Mexico— commented in an interview with Ciro Gómez Leyva that they were not aware of these extradition requests.
“Yesterday we all learned, because this part was not aware of it either, that the Mexican Government requested extradition on four occasions. We were unaware of this information. Now we know it. However, it is normal that we are unaware of it because an extradition procedure does not imply, at least at this stage, the intervention of a lawyer,” said Juan Manuel Delgado on Wednesday morning.
He added that these extradition requests are different from the procedure that he has carried out together with Juan Pablo Penilla (another of Mayo Zambada’s advisors), through which they seek to have the co-founder of the Sinaloa Cartel repatriated to Mexico.
Why are they seeking the repatriation of Mayo Zambada?
Juan Manuel Delgado explained that the extradition request is made for two reasons: for a person to face a criminal procedure or for him to serve a sentence. In this case, the Mexican Government seeks to have the Sinaloa drug lord extradited due to the three arrest warrants that he has in force.
However, Mayo Zambada’s defense is seeking that the drug trafficker not be extradited but repatriated. This is a procedure of a different nature, since it adheres to the requirement of respecting the human rights of the person he represents.
“Repatriation is a humanitarian procedure, it is a procedure by which a national voluntarily requests to return to his country due to exceptional situations, such as diplomatic or humanitarian emergencies. In this case, due to an inherent violation of the rights of Mr. Ismael Zambada,” emphasized Juan Manuel Delgado.
Both the Mexican Government and Mayo’s defense have maintained that the drug lord was deprived of his freedom in Culiacán, Sinaloa, and taken against his will to U.S. territory. That is, that his human rights were violated during his detention.
While his legal advisors seek his repatriation, ‘El Mayo’ Zambada has another concern on his mind: avoiding the death penalty, due to the charges he faces in New York. For this reason, his lawyer in the US, Frank Pérez, opened the possibility of his client reaching a plea agreement with the American authorities.
Source: infobae
