Mexican cartel boss Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, who was one of the United States’s most wanted drug lords, pleaded not guilty to murder and drug trafficking charges in federal court in New York on Friday.
Zambada, co-founder and leader of the powerful Sinaloa cartel, will stay in prison until his trial after he was arrested in July in New Mexico, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York said.
Prosecutors wrote in a letter asking a judge for Zambada’s continued detention that he was “one of the world’s most notorious and dangerous drug traffickers,” noting that the 76-year-old drug lord had been indicted more than a dozen times in the U.S. in the last two decades.
In the most recent instance, Zambada was indicted in New York in February on 17 charges, including conspiracy to commit murder, running a criminal enterprise, and several charges related to distributing and manufacturing cocaine, fentanyl, methamphetamine, heroin, and marijuana.
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Mexican cartel boss ‘El Mayo’ pleads not guilty to murder and drug conspiracies
