The rights of the Bin Laden of Sinaloa

He is an individual who has spent his entire life breaking the law. Today, however, he is asking for the protection of the law.

I am referring to Ismael El Mayo Zambada , one of the bosses of the Sinaloa Cartel.

It is difficult to know how many people he murdered or ordered to be murdered, but I dare say dozens. He was also undoubtedly the mastermind of many other kidnappings and acts of torture. Who knows how many politicians, police officers and military personnel he bribed and corrupted. He was simply the leader of one of the most powerful criminal organisations in the world.

His life was one of illegality. Now that he is in prison in the United States, he is demanding that his rights be respected.

And he is right.

Like all Mexicans, he is, to begin with, innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. El Mayo Zambada , even though he is the personification of the devil himself, has the right to due process of law.

The United States already violated him by kidnapping him and removing him from Mexican territory without an extradition trial. One day they caught him in Sinaloa, flew him to Texas, and he entered that country without a passport or visa. Paradoxically, he is an undocumented migrant who should be deported now that the Trump administration is obsessed with doing the same with millions of undocumented immigrants in the northern neighbor.

But it was not the Trump administration that carried out this unilateral action without consulting or requesting the participation of the Mexican government. No, it was the Biden administration that quietly removed Mayo from its country.

Since his arrest was not carried out through an extradition trial, Zambada could face the death penalty in the United States. This is the most important piece of evidence that the Justice Department of that country has in negotiating with him. If he decides to cooperate with the American authorities and reveal the tons of information he has, he could be spared the death penalty.

This is what El Mayo wants to avoid. In the letter he sent to the Mexican authorities last week, Zambada says that “if the Mexican government does not act, I will be sentenced to death without a doubt and, furthermore, this will constitute a dangerous precedent that would allow any foreign government to violate our territory and sovereignty at any time with impunity.”

He is right. What he is asking for is to be repatriated to face justice here.

And not so veiledly, he threatens: Mexico “must intervene so that this matter does not result in a collapse in the bilateral relationship between both countries, since we must not lose sight of the irregular and illegal manner in which the undersigned was placed at the disposal of the United States authorities.”

Collapse?

What would the head of the Sinaloa Cartel reveal to visualize the destruction of relations between Mexico and the United States?

The letter represents a trap for President Sheinbaum .

On the one hand, as head of state, she has to defend the rights of Mexican citizens. It is unacceptable that a foreign government comes to national territory, illegally extracts a person, judges him in that country and threatens him with the death penalty. There is no justification for violating the sovereignty and laws of Mexico, even if the accused is El Mayo . If we accept that, tomorrow they can do the same to any Mexican.

On the other hand, if Sheinbaum begins to defend Zambada 's rights, the likelihood that there is an alliance between organized crime and the Morena governments increases, something that is already part of the Trumpist creed.

This is how Héctor Aguilar Camín summed it up accurately yesterday in Milenio : “The contradiction speaks for itself: an argument for legality and national sovereignty in defense of crime?”

Resolving this mess is not easy for the President. She has to be very careful with this trap or contradiction, whatever you want to call it.

The United States is not going to return Zambada to Mexico. The government there is going to milk this affair for all it can. It is not every day that the Capo di tutti capi of the Sinaloa Cartel is imprisoned.

Worse still, he is now the leader of an international terrorist organization, according to the new parameters of the Trump administration: the Sinaloa version of Bin Laden . What's more, if for some reason he were to return to Mexico, with the new terrorist designation, Mayo could be assassinated by a commando of the US armed forces in the heart of the country, just as they did with the leader of Al Qaeda in Pakistan.

X: @leozuckermann