Son of drug kingpin ‘El Chapo’ pleads not guilty to drug trafficking charges

Joaquin Guzman Lopez, a son of notorious drug kingpin “El Chapo”, pleaded not guilty to drug trafficking and other charges on Tuesday, days after an astonishing capture in the US.

Guzman Lopez, dressed in an orange jumpsuit, stood with feet shackled as federal prosecutors in Chicago detailed a five-count indictment that also includes money laundering, conspiracy and weapons charges.

He declined a Spanish interpreter and answered most of US district judge Sharon Coleman’s questions designed to assess his health and determine whether he understood the proceedings with a simple, “Yes, your honour”.

Guzman Lopez and Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, a longtime leader of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel were arrested by US authorities in El Paso, Texas last week, according to the Justice Department. Both men, who face multiple charges in the US, oversaw the trafficking of “tens of thousands of pounds of drugs into the United States, along with related violence”, according to the FBI.

Zambada has eluded US authorities for years. He was thought to be more involved in day-to-day operations of the cartel than his better-known and flashier boss, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, who was sentenced to life in prison in the US in 2019 and is the father of Guzman Lopez, 38.

In recent years, Guzman’s sons have led a faction of the cartel known as the little Chapos, or “Chapitos”, that has been identified as a main exporter of fentanyl to the US market. Last year, US prosecutors unsealed sprawling indictments against more than two dozen members of the Sinaloa cartel, Guzman Lopez and his brothers, in a fentanyl-trafficking investigation.

At Tuesday’s brief hearing, security was tight, with phones, laptops and other electronics barred from the courtroom. Guzman Lopez remained standing, leaning into the microphone to answer the judge, often with his arms folded behind him.

Guzman Lopez remained jailed in Chicago and was due back in court on September 30.

Zambada pleaded not guilty last week to various drug trafficking charges and was being held without bond. He is due back in court later this week.

The men’s mysterious capture fuelled theories about how federal authorities pulled it off and prompted Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to take the unusual step of issuing a public appeal to drug cartels not to fight each other.

Zambada’s lawyer, Frank Perez, alleged his client was kidnapped by Guzman Lopez and brought to the US aboard a private plane that landed near El Paso. Mr Perez pushed back against claims that his client was tricked into flying into the country.

But Guzman Lopez’s lawyer Jeffrey Lichtman, who has represented other family members, rejected those ideas without going into specifics.

“There’s been massive amount of rumours and things printed in the press. I don’t know what’s real. I don’t know what’s not real,” he said. “But it shouldn’t really surprise anybody that there’s a story that seems to be changing every few minutes, which means that much of what’s being leaked to the press is inaccurate.”

He added that there “is no co-operation with the government and there never has been.”

The US government had offered a reward of up to 15 million dollars (£11.7 million) for leading to Zambada’s capture.

His detention follows arrests of other Sinaloa cartel figures, including one of his sons and another “El Chapo” son, Ovidio Guzman Lopez, who pleaded not guilty to drug-trafficking charges in Chicago last year. Zambada’s son pleaded guilty in US federal court in San Diego in 2021 to being a leader in the Sinaloa cartel.