I realize the enormous damage that illegal drugs have caused to people in the USA and Mexico, said Zambada in Spanish in the courtroom in New York.
I apologize for all this, and I take responsibility for everything I have done, continued Zambada who once led the feared Sinaloa cartel together with the equally notorious Joaquín ”El Chapo” Guzmán.
The Sinaloa cartel was not only leading in the enormous spread of drugs in Mexico and the USA; it was also one of the fundamental reasons for the massive spiral of violence that still paralyzes Mexican society.
Corrupted police
Guilty, replied Zambada to the charges against him.
Then the 77-year-old Zambada had also told about the cooperation with drug cartels in Colombia, and how border police and military were corrupted "so that one could work freely".
Zambada was arrested in Texas in the USA last year, and he chose to cooperate and confess to crimes committed over decades to avoid a death penalty. He is considered to have been the strategist within the organization – but also responsible for controlling the organization's hitmen, so-called sicarios, to kill opponents.
"Innocent murdered"
Many innocent have been murdered, he said during the eight-minute speech.
Zambada has previously claimed that he was kidnapped in Mexico, and taken by private plane to Texas. Then, American authorities had been chasing him for a long time.
His former colleague in the Sinaloa cartel, the more flamboyant Guzmán, has previously been sentenced to life imprisonment after a conviction in 2019 in the same courthouse in Brooklyn where Zambada is now convicted of his crimes.
