Vicente “El Vicentillo” Zambada Niebla is the son of Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada who along with Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman heads the Sinaloa Cartel, was delivered by Mexico to the U.S., where he will be tried by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, on charges of drug conspiracy and federal drug trafficking.
According to investigations by the Drug Enforcement Agency, “Vicentillo” was involved, along with his father, in importing, transporting and distributing large quantities of cocaine and heroin on U.S. soil.
Mexican authorities said with both Zambada Sr. and ‘El Chapo’ Guzman fugitives, with multimillion-dollar bounties on their heads, Ismael had designated El Vicentillo to oversee operations, logistics and security; moving him into the upper tier of cartel management.
“Jesus Vicente Zambada-Niebla is believed to be one of the most significant Mexican drug defendants extradited from Mexico to the United States since Osiel Cardenas Guillen, the accused leader of the notorious Gulf Cartel, was extradited in 2007.
-U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
Zambada Niebla was arrested by federal police in Mexico City on 19 March 2009, in Fuentes del Pedregal, along with Oscar Barajas Diaz, Juan Carlos Soria Torres, Federico Perez Hernandez, Wilfredo Navarrete and Sergio Ardila Lopez Quevedo who worked as his personal escort, in possession of weapons used exclusively by the Mexican Army, Navy and Air Force.
Zambada Niebla had been held in the maximum security Federal “Northeast” Social Rehabilitation Center No. 3, in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, after the Third District Federal Criminal Judge Federal Criminal had ordered his temporary detention for purposes of extradition requested by the Attorney General’s Office.
After exhausting all stages of the extradition proceedings initiated by the PGR, the Foreign Ministry issued the relevant ruling through which the Government of Mexico granted the requested extradition to his counterpart in the United States.
The delivery was made Thursday at the Matamoros, Tamaulipas-Brownsville, Texas border crossing where Federal Ministerial police placed the now extradited Zambada Niebla into the hands of U.S. government agents.
