By KELIN DILLON

Just days after notorious Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera’s son Joaquín Guzmán López turned himself – and the allegedly abducted Sinaloa Cartel crime boss Ismael “El Mayo”  Zambada García – into the U.S. authorities in El Paso, Texas, Guzmán López officially pled not guilty to drug trafficking charges at a federal U.S. court in Chicago.

Guzmán López’s lawyer Jeffrey Lichtman also denied that his client had any kind of predetermined agreement with U.S. authorities before arriving into the country with El Mayo, who Guzmán López supposedly forcibly abducted to the United States under false pretenses.

“We have no agreement with the government,” said Lichtman. “There has never been an agreement with the government with Joaquín Guzmán López. Period.”

Meanwhile, Zambada García’s legal representative Frank Pérez continued purporting Guzmán López’s supposed underlying deal with the U.S. government, citing the fact that Guzmán López has not been legally charged El Mayo’s kidnapping as proof of his relationship with the U.S. authorities.

“(Zambada García) did not surrender or negotiate any terms with the US government,” said Pérez in a statement. “Joaquín Guzmán López forcibly kidnapped my client. He was ambushed, thrown to the ground and handcuffed by Joaquín and six men in military uniforms. They tied his legs and put a black bag over his head. Then they threw him into the back of a pickup truck and took him to a landing strip.”

According to experts with knowledge of the situation, it would be implausible for Guzmán López to turn himself in and bring Zambada García into the United States without participation from the U.S. side.

For his part, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) urged the U.S. government to release relevant information on the crime lords’ arrests to the Mexican authorities and reaffirmed that the Mexican Armed Forces were uninvolved in the scenario.

“We are also waiting for reports from the United States government so that there is no speculation, no conjecture, but rather we know for certain what happened, how these two people came to the United States, to El Paso. We need to have more information and speak the truth,” AMLO said during his daily morning press conference on Tuesday, July 30.

“We have already been informed that Guzmán López was in talks with the United States government, that he wanted to turn himself in,” added the Mexican federal executive. “The U.S. government is saying that it did not know that he was going to turn himself in or that Mr. Zambada was on the plane. That is what the U.S. government says.” 

“What we want, and what the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) and Secretariat of Foreign Relations are doing, is to know more about this: where they boarded the plane, what type of plane, why if the agreement was with one, two arrived; Mr. Zambada’s lawyer says that they subdued him; where, and with who.”

“We need to know all of this information; whether agents of the United States government, of its agencies, participated in Mexican territory. We are absolutely certain that members of the Mexican Armed Forces did not participate,” concluded López Obrador.