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

CHICAGO (AP) — Joaquín Guzmán López, a son of notorious drug kingpin “El Chapo,” pleaded not guilty to drug trafficking and other charges Tuesday, days after an astonishing capture in the U.S.

Guzmán López, 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 U.S. District Judge Sharon Coleman’s questions designed to assess his health and determine whether he understood the proceedings with a simple, “Yes, your honor.”

Guzmán López and Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, a longtime of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel were arrested by U.S. authorities in the El Paso, Texas-area last week, according to the Justice Department. Both men, who face multiple charges in the U.S., 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 U.S. 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” Guzmán, who was sentenced to life in prison in the U.S. in 2019 and is the father of Guzmán López, 38.

In recent years, Guzmán’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 U.S. market. Last year, U.S. prosecutors unsealed sprawling indictments against more than two dozen members of the Sinaloa cartel, Guzmán López and his brothers, in a fentanyl-trafficking investigation.

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

Guzmán López remained jailed in Chicago and was due back in court on Sept. 30.

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

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

Zambada’s attorney, Frank Perez, alleged his client was kidnapped by Guzmán López and brought to the U.S. aboard a private plane that landed near El Paso. Perez pushed back against claims that his client was tricked into flying into the country.

But Guzmán López’s attorney Jeffrey Lichtman, who has represented other family members, rejected those ideas without going into specifics.

“There’s been massive amount of rumors 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 cooperation with the government and there never has been.”

The U.S. government had offered a reward of up to $15 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 Guzmán López, who pleaded not guilty to drug-trafficking charges in Chicago last year. Zambada’s son pleaded guilty in U.S. federal court in San Diego in 2021 to being a leader in the Sinaloa cartel.