For Mexican drug lord Joaquín (El Chapo) Guzmán, a handshake snub was the kiss of death.
The Sinaloa cartel kingpin once had a fellow cartel leader’s brother killed because the man left him hanging after a 2004 meeting, witness Jesus Reynaldo (El Rey) Zambada Garcia told jurors during a second week of testimony in Guzmán’s drug trafficking trial in Brooklyn.
The witness said Rodolfo Carrillo Fuentes, whose brother Vicente Carrillo Fuentes ran Sinaloa’s allied Juarez cartel, inadvertently triggered a turf war with his deadly diss.
“When he left, Chapo gave him his hand and said, ‘See you later, friend.’ Rodolfo left him standing with his hand extended,” Zambada Garcia said.
“Chapo was really mad,” he testified.
A short time later, Rodolfo Carrillo was murdered while leaving a movie theater.
“When he was coming out of the movies. He was coming out with his family, his wife and his children,” Zambada Garcia testified. “Rodolfo Carrillo died, his wife did, too, and (a judicial police) commander was seriously injured but survived afterwards.”
In retaliation for his brother’s killing, Vicente Carrillo allegedly had Guzmán’s little brother Arturo killed in prison — starting the bloody war between the Sinaloa and Juarez enterprises.
Zambada Garcia’s wide-ranging testimony described Guzmán’s violent temper, his diamond-encrusted weaponry and his multiple hideouts in the Sinaloa mountains after his first prison escape in 2001.
He said he visited Guzmán at the secret spots on several occasions because he and his brother, Ismael (El Mayo) Zambada Garcia, wanted to stay close and earn the drug lord’s trust.
“Someday, if something should happen to me, you’re going to need good friends, and he is a good friend,” the older brother said, Zambada Garcia’s recalled.
The turncoat testimony detailed two near-captures of Guzmán in 2002 and 2003.
Zambada Garcia said the first close call involved a lieutenant colonel based in Mexico City who allegedly told him Guzmán was surrounded on all sides by members of the Mexican military.
The official offered to stop an invasion and arrest if Guzmán paid a bribe of $250,000, Zambada Garcia testified.
After a series of phone calls, the ransom was secured within 20 minutes, he said.
“I took the money, and I delivered it to him,” Zambada Garcia said. “The operation was aborted. There was no problem.”
The second near-capture came a year later at Guzmán’s Durango hideout, close to the Sinaloa border, he said.
He recalled visiting the location with his wife and brother for a social call and seeing military helicopters swarm overhead.
“We all started running to take cover. I told my wife to get back on the plane with the pilot. My wife told me ‘get on the plane’ but I told her no, I’m staying here with my brother and Chapo. The noise was coming closer and closer and closer. I stayed close to Chapo. I asked him to give me a rifle,” he said.
“He had rifles there, he gave me one — I think it was an AK-47. He said, ‘If they do come down, we’re going to have to kill them.’ He was calm. Alert, but calm. I felt that adrenaline rush you have in a life and death situation,” Zambada Garcia testified.
The helicopters never landed. The group concluded they were out looking for poppy and marijuana farms and had no idea Guzmán was hiding in the pine trees below.
Zambada Garcia said Guzmán had a .38 super pistol emblazoned with his initials in black diamonds that he carried with him at all times. The personal arsenal also included bazookas, AK-47s and AR-15s, he said.
Guzmán, 61, has pleaded not guilty to 17 counts of drug trafficking, conspiracy, firearms offenses and money laundering. Prosecutors claim the man who rose from peasant farmer to become head of the Sinaloa cartel played a role in at least 30 murders.
Guzmán famously staged two elaborate escapes from Mexican prisons, including one with a subterranean tunnel and mile-long track for a custom motorbike.
Before Assistant U.S. Attorney Gina Parlovecchio finished direct, Zambada Garcia testified about the twisted 2008 killing of a commander of the judicial police, identified only as Rafita, who was considered one of the most dangerous sicarios employed by Arturo Beltran Leyva.
“(They) told me he had to be killed,” the witness testified, adding that he was allegedly one of “the most important targets in the war.”
Pinning down the target was proving difficult for the Sinaloa Cartel. After following him for several days, they staged a fake car accident involving his son to get him out of his house.
“They had (staged) a simulation saying one of his kids had been in an accident heading to school,” he said. “They sent (a sicario) to tell him his son (was hit). Rafa ran out to look for the boy, and that’s when he was killed. The boy didn’t even realise it had happened he just went to school.”
