Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, the powerful longtime leader of Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel, pleaded not guilty Friday in New York on a 17-count indictment accusing him of narcotics trafficking and murder.

Participating through a Spanish-language interpreter, Zambada didn’t speak, except to give brief answers to a judge’s standard questions about whether he understood various documents and procedures and how he was feeling – “fine, fine” he said. His lawyers entered the not-guilty plea on his behalf. Zambada sat quietly as he listened to the interpreter. Leaving court, he appeared to accept some assistance getting out of a chair and then walked out slowly but unaided.

Sought by American law enforcement for more than two decades, Zambada has been in U.S. custody since July 25, when he landed in a private plane at an airport outside El Paso in the company of another fugitive cartel leader, Joaquín Guzmán López, according to federal authorities.

Zambada later said in a letter that he was forcibly kidnapped in Mexico and brought to the U.S. by Guzmán López, the son of the imprisoned Sinaloa co-founder Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.

U.S. prosecutors in Brooklyn have asked the judge to detain Zambada permanently while he awaits trial. If convicted on all charges, Zambada, 76, faces a minimum sentence of life in prison and would be eligible for the death penalty.

In a letter to the judge, prosecutors called Zambada “one of the world’s most notorious and dangerous drug traffickers.”

“The defendant maintained an arsenal of military-grade weapons to protect his person, his drugs, and his empire,” they wrote. “His heavily armed private security forces were used as his personal bodyguards and as protection for drug shipments throughout Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, and beyond. Moreover, he maintained a stable of ‘sicarios,’ or hitmen, who carried out gruesome assassinations and kidnappings aimed at maintaining discipline within his organization, protecting against challenges from rivals, and silencing those who would cooperate with law enforcement.”

That included ordering the murder, just months ago, of his own nephew, the prosecutors said.

Zambada previously pleaded not guilty to the charges at an earlier court appearance in Texas.

His surprise arrest has touched off fighting in Mexico between rival factions in the Sinaloa cartel. Gunfights have killed several people. Schools in businesses in Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa, have closed amid the fighting. The battles are believed to be between factions loyal to Zambada and those led by other sons of “El Chapo” Guzmán, who was convicted of drug and conspiracy charges and sentenced to life in prison in the U.S. in 2019.

It remains unclear why Guzmán López surrendered to U.S. authorities and brought Zambada with him. Guzmán López is now awaiting trial on a separate drug trafficking indictment in Chicago, where he has pleaded not guilty to drug trafficking and other charges in federal court.

Strange twist in cartel leaders’ saga

In an unexpected twist, last month Mexican prosecutors said they were bringing charges against Guzmán for apparently kidnapping Zambada. The younger Guzmán apparently intended to turn himself in to U.S. authorities, but may have brought Zambada along as a prize to sweeten any plea deal.

Federal prosecutors issued a statement saying “an arrest warrant has been prepared” against the Guzmán for kidnapping.

But it also cited another charge under an article of Mexico’s criminal code that defines what he did as treason. That section of the law says treason is committed “by those who illegally abduct a person in Mexico in order to hand them over to authorities of another country.”

That clause was apparently motivated by the abduction of a Mexican doctor wanted for allegedly participating in the 1985 torture and killing of Drug Enforcement Administration agent Kiki Camarena.

Nowhere in the statement does it mention that the younger Guzmán was a member of the Chapitos — “little Chapos” — faction of the Sinaloa cartel, made up of Chapo’s sons, that smuggles millions of doses of the deadly opioid fentanyl into the United States, causing about 70,000 overdose deaths each year. According to a 2023 indictment by the U.S. Justice Department, the Chapitos and their cartel associates used corkscrews, electrocution and hot chiles to torture their rivals while some of their victims were “fed dead or alive to tigers.”

El Chapo, the Sinaloa cartel’s founder, is serving a life sentence in a maximum security prison in Colorado after being convicted in 2019 on charges including drug trafficking, money laundering and weapons-related offenses.

Last year, El Chapo sent an “SOS” message to Mexico’s president, alleging that he has been subjected to “psychological torment” in prison.