By Lizbeth Diaz
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexico’s attorney general’s office said on Thursday it had not yet received detailed information from U.S. authorities about a flight that carried two notorious drug traffickers to the United States last month, amid mounting tensions between the two countries over the arrests.
The office said in a statement that it had requested details of the flight from the U.S. Department of Justice, including detailed records of the pilot, the aircraft and related immigration and customs clearances.
Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, co-founder of the Sinaloa Cartel, was arrested on July 25 along with one of the sons of his imprisoned Sinaloa Cartel co-founder, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, at an airfield in New Mexico.
Mexico is investigating the incidents to determine whether the violent abduction of a Mexican citizen and his handover to U.S. authorities constituted treason.
The dramatic arrest was a major victory for U.S. law enforcement, but it dismayed the Mexican government, which had no prior warning or involvement in the matter.
Zambada had his lawyer testify that he had been kidnapped against his will by El Chapo’s son Joaquin Guzman Lopez.
Guzman Lopez’s lawyer denied that Zambada was arrested by force and said it was a voluntary surrender.
According to authorities, relations between the two main factions of the Sinaloa cartel – one led by Zambada, the other by El Chapo’s sons – have been difficult at times since El Chapo’s arrest in 2016.
Thursday’s statement said the U.S. had allowed Mexican authorities to investigate the New Mexico airfield, but that this did not answer remaining questions.
Mexican investigators added that they had identified a secret runway in Sinaloa from which the flight is believed to have taken off.
The Attorney General’s Office also said it had found evidence related to the murder of recently elected federal MP Hector Cuen.
Zambada claims that Cuen was present at the meeting between him and Guzman Lopez and was killed in the subsequent ambush. Sinaloa authorities, however, have said Cuen was apparently killed at a gas station in Culiacán.
In the statement, the Attorney General’s Office said that the investigation into Cuen’s murder was poorly conducted by state authorities. The victim’s body bore four gunshot wounds, while only one shot could be heard in a video circulating of the alleged gas station murder.
The Sinaloa prosecutor’s office did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
On Wednesday, Sinaloa prosecutors said they were also investigating the disappearance of two bodyguards who had not been seen since the day of the arrests.
U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar said last week that no U.S. personnel were on site when Zambada and Guzman Lopez boarded the plane that took them to the United States.
“No U.S. resources were used in the surrender. It was not our aircraft, nor our pilot, nor our people,” he said in a statement.
(Reporting by Lizbeth Diaz, writing by Brendan O’Boyle; editing by Stephen Eisenhammer and Sonali Paul)
