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Federal officers introduced a flurry of fees on Friday towards the 4 sons of the infamous Mexican drug lord generally known as El Chapo, saying the lads had been main their imprisoned father’s empire and had been answerable for transferring huge portions of fentanyl into and all through the US.
Lawyer Common Merrick B. Garland mentioned at a information convention in Washington that along with the 4 sons — collectively generally known as Los Chapitos — federal indictments in Manhattan, Chicago and Washington had charged greater than two dozen different folks in what he described as a worldwide fentanyl manufacturing and distribution operation run by the Sinaloa drug cartel. El Chapo, whose actual identify is Joaquín Guzmán Loera, led the group for years and is serving life in jail in the US.
Mr. Garland mentioned the defendants included suppliers in China who offered so-called precursor supplies utilized in manufacturing fentanyl; a dealer primarily based in Guatemala who purchased the chemical compounds on behalf of operators of clandestine labs in Mexico; and a weapons provider who supplied the cartel with weapons smuggled into Mexico from the US.
The 5 indictments, taken collectively, supplied a panoramic view of how fentanyl — which led to tens of hundreds of deaths in the US final yr — was created, transported and in the end offered on American streets.
“The Justice Division is attacking each facet of the cartel’s operations,” Mr. Garland mentioned.
The fees additionally gave a taste of the violence and terror that has wracked Mexico for years and supported the Sinaloa cartel’s fentanyl enterprise. The indictments famous that assassins working for Mr. Guzmán’s sons murdered authorities officers, tortured rivals with electrocution and even “fed a few of their victims, lifeless and alive, to tigers.”
The brand new indictments got here at a second of a excessive rigidity between U.S. and Mexican officers over their deteriorating law-enforcement relationship — and over the problem, particularly, of who was responsible for the scourge of fentanyl.
Anne Milgram, the pinnacle of the Drug Enforcement Administration, lashed out in February on the Mexican authorities, complaining that officers there had supplied no help to U.S. brokers engaged on instances involving fentanyl from Mexico. Inside weeks, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico shot again with baseless claims that his nation had nothing to do with the drug.
“Right here, we don’t produce fentanyl,” he mentioned.
At his information convention, Mr. Garland mentioned immediately, “The Sinaloa cartel is basically answerable for the surge of fentanyl into the US over the past eight years.”
He credited the Mexican authorities for its cooperation within the U.S. effort, saying that Justice Division officers had met in Washington on Thursday with Mexico’s secretaries of protection and inside safety, its lawyer common and its international minister.
The indictments unsealed on Friday weren’t the primary fees introduced towards Mr. Guzmán’s sons. Like their father, who was charged in seven instances in seven cities earlier than his eventual conviction in Federal District Court docket in Brooklyn in 2019, they’re now going through a number of indictments in a number of jurisdictions.
One of many sons, Ovidio Guzmán López, was going through fees together with his brother Joaquín Guzmán López, unsealed in Federal District Court docket in Washington in 2019, days after their father was discovered responsible. Lengthy generally known as the least completed of Mr. Guzmán’s youngsters, Ovidio Guzmán López was arrested by the Mexican authorities in January in Culiacán, a northwestern metropolis that has served for many years as the house base of the Sinaloa cartel.
Two of Mr. Guzman’s different sons by a distinct spouse — Iván Archivaldo Guzmán Salazar and Jesús Alfredo Guzmán Salazar — had been named on Friday in two separate indictments in Chicago and Manhattan. The Chicago case additionally included Joaquín Guzmán López as a defendant.
Iván was already going through fees filed in 2014 in San Diego, and Jesús Alfredo had been charged in 2015 in Chicago. Each stay at giant in Mexico, as does Joaquín.
The sons inherited a portion of their father’s fractured empire after his extradition to the US in 2017, on the day earlier than Donald J. Trump took workplace. Typically derided within the Mexican information media as playboys and unworthy successors to the household patriarch, they nonetheless created a thriving commerce in fentanyl, U.S. regulation enforcement officers say, whereas navigating the treacherous relations with different prime cartel figures, together with Mr. Guzmán’s brother, Aurelio, and his longtime enterprise associate, Ismael Zambada García.
The trial of Mr. Guzmán, which sprawled over the course of three months, laid naked the depravity on the coronary heart of the Sinaloa cartel as witnesses described how its assassins seared folks with irons and burned them alive in bonfires.
“We take intention on the Sinaloa cartel and the worldwide community of demise that feeds it,” Damian Williams, the U.S. lawyer for the Southern District of New York, mentioned on the information convention on Friday.
Glenn Thrush contributed reporting.
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