US authorities report that “El Vicentillo”, the main witness against “Chapo”, is no longer in prison

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Mexican drug trafficker Vicente Zambada Niebla, son of Ismael El Mayo Zambada, leader of a faction of the Sinaloa cartel, is no longer in a US federal prison, the US Bureau of Prisons reported.

“With the information we have available at this time, we can tell you that Vicente Zambada-Niebla is not in the custody of the Bureau of Prisons,” wrote spokespersons for that agency in response to questions from the Associated Press.

The office did not say when he was released from jail or why.

The Mexican was sentenced in 2019 to 15 years in prison by a judge in Chicago. That same year, the former member of the Sinaloa cartel was one of the star witnesses in the trial of Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán in Brooklyn, New York.

Zambada Niebla testified that El Chapo, with whom he worked, had contacts in the DEA and that he used them to help him get out of the Sinaloa cartel. Guzmán, one of the best-known drug traffickers out there and a former leader of the Sinaloa cartel, was sentenced to life in prison.

The case of Zambada Niebla in the electronic system of the US federal courts does not show information about his release from prison.

On the other hand, another son of El Mayo, Ismael Zambada-Imperial, known as Mayito Gordo, pleaded guilty Friday to drug trafficking in a court in San Diego, California. He will be sentenced by a judge in one year.

During El Chapo’s trial in New York, Zambada Niebla testified that he had two telephone conversations, monitored by the US government, with his father El Mayo while Zambada Niebla was imprisoned in the United States.

Both calls occurred in 2012 and, according to Zambada Niebla, they were trivial conversations in which he said things like “Dad, how are you” and “I love you very much” but in which he also asked for help in finding out information about other traffickers who could be handed over. to the DEA.

A lawyer for El Chapo said during the trial that shortly after Zambada Niebla’s calls with El Mayo, Guzmán was arrested, but El Mayo was not, thus suggesting that El Mayo gave US authorities information about El Chapo’s location.

Source: La Jornada

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