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Former U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar reaffirmed this Wednesday that the arrest of drug lord Ismael 'El Mayo' Zambada after landing in the U.S. aboard a small plane was not a Washington operation, in response to recent questioning by Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum.
"President Claudia Sheinbaum has asked a question: 'Who is telling the truth?' (...) We communicated with the Mexican government to say it was not our plane, it was not our pilot, and it was not our operation," the diplomatic representative in the North American country during Democrat Joe Biden's presidency posted on his X social media account.
Salazar's statement comes after Sheinbaum questioned the version he provided at the time, stating that the U.S. played no role and its agents did not intervene on Mexican territory during the arrest of 'El Mayo' Zambada in July 2024.
The controversy was reignited this week after it was revealed that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) donated the plane in which the drug trafficker landed to a U.S. museum, after he had been the victim of a kidnapping by one of the sons of his former partner, Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán, as Zambada himself alleged from prison.
In this regard, Salazar recalled that both he and the then-Attorney General, Merrick Garland, communicated with Mexico on this matter, while ratifying that Washington did not carry out an operation in the neighboring country, despite Sheinbaum's suspicions and the investigation opened by the Mexican Attorney General's Office.
"The truth is the truth (...) I write about this episode in my book 'Borderlands: My Fight for an Inclusive America'," added the diplomat, who also served as Secretary of the Interior during Barack Obama's term in the White House.
Hours earlier, representatives of the Mexican Attorney General's Office had accused him of "violating" the principle of good faith that must govern international relations by denying Washington's involvement in the arrest of the founder of the Sinaloa Cartel.
"What Ambassador Salazar is being reproached for is that he acted with falsehood, and by virtue of the foregoing, he violated, contravened, and attacked the regulatory framework of international diplomacy," stated the second-highest official of the Mexican Public Prosecutor's Office, Raúl Armando Jiménez.
Since the capture of 'El Mayo', the Mexican government has requested information from Washington regarding the circumstances of the arrest, while Zambada maintains that he was kidnapped by Joaquín Guzmán López, son of 'El Chapo' Guzmán, and taken against his will to the United States.
[Publicidad]