According to the recent indictment against Los Chapitos; rival drug traffickers, law enforcement officers, and members allied with other factions were among those interrogated and tortured at the Navolato, Sinaloa, ranch owned by Iván Archivaldo Guzmán Sálazar.
Some of their victims were “fed dead or alive to tigers,” according to the indictment recently released by the U.S. Justice Department.
The Justice Department accused the cartel members of running “the largest, most violent, and most prolific fentanyl trafficking operation in the world.” U.S. prosecutors also detailed the brutal methods of torture and executions used by the cartel to extend their power and intimidate enemies.
Torture Techniques
At the ranch of Iván Archivaldo Guzmán Sálazar, “Los Ninis” would bring in for interrogation individuals they captured, including rival traffickers, workers loyal to other factions of the Sinaloa Cartel, and officials who refused to facilitate their operations. Once the information was obtained from these captives, typically through torture, these individuals were killed – either by or at the direction of Los Chapitos themselves.
Victims were kidnapped, waterboarded, and/or electrocuted, and other torture methods even included a PGR agent being repeatedly stabbed with a corkscrew and hot chili peppers smushed into his wounds.
The indictment goes on to allege that El Chapo’s sons used electrocution and waterboarding to torture members of rival drug cartels as well as associates who refused to pay debts.
While many of these victims were shot, others were fed dead or alive to tigers belonging to Iván Archivaldo Guzmán Sálazar and Jesus Alfredo Guzmán Sálazar, “Alfredo,” the defendants, who raised and kept the tigers at their ranches as pets.
Fentanyl “Testing”
“Two of the defendants tested the potency of the cartel’s fentanyl on individuals who were tied down,” said Attorney General Merrick Garland. “In another instance, those defendants experimented on a woman they had been ordered to shoot. Instead, they injected her repeatedly with fentanyl until she overdosed and died.”
Another time, Garland said, “after an addict died testing a batch of the cartel’s fentanyl, one of the defendants sent the batch to the United States anyway.”
DEA Administrator Anne Milgram said that the agency decided to take action against Los Chapitos because they are the biggest outfit in the game. In the spring of 2022, Ovidio Guzmán stated that he was working to centralize all fentanyl manufacturing in Sinaloa, effectively establishing a monopoly for the Cartel over the fentanyl market in Mexico. As part of that effort, the Cartel is trying to make the most potent fentanyl and sell it in the United States at the lowest price.
“We decided to proactively target the criminal network that is most responsible for the fentanyl flooding our communities,” Milgram said. “We looked at our data and the answer was clear. Most of the fentanyl in the United States comes from the Sinaloa cartel.”
Captured Los Zetas
Starting around 2014, the three charged brothers began manufacturing fentanyl at a clandestine laboratory in Durango, Mexico that had previously been used to produce methamphetamine.
In May 2017, three members of the rival Los Zetas Cartel were captured by the defendants in the mountains near the border between Sinaloa and Durango.
On the orders of Los Chapitos, members of Los Ninis tortured the victims using electrocution to gain information about Los Zetas alliances with other rival cartels. At this time, BLO and Damaso Lopez were at war with Los Chapitos following the extradition of their father “El Chapo”.
On May 27, 2017, Ivan shot the Los Zetas victims and they were fed to the tigers kept on the ranch.
Kidnapped & Tortured PGR Agents
Federal prosecutors alleged that two of El Chapo’s sons, Ivan and Jesus Alfredo, were involved in the capture, torture, and murder of two Mexican federal law enforcement officers in 2017.
One of the PGR officers was kidnapped as he was leaving the Culiacan airport in his car and interrogated before being shot in the head the following day by Ivan and Jesus Alfredo.
“Los Ninis” kidnapped the other officer and also brought him to the Navolato ranch owned by Ivan. “For approximately two hours, members of Los Ninis tortured Victim-5 by inserting a corkscrew into Victim 5’s muscles, ripping it out of his muscles, and placing hot chiles in his open wounds and nose” before being shot dead by Iván Archivaldo Guzmán Sálazar, the indictment alleges.
That officer was tortured in front of El Chapo’s sons by cartel members of “Los Ninis” including “El Nini” and “Panu.” Nestor Isidro Perez Salas, “El Nini” and his subordinate Jorge Humberto Figueroa Benitez “El 27” are leaders of the “Los Ninis” security group and fentanyl operations working for Oscar Noe Medina Gonzalez, also known as “Panu” who controls their security for the state of Mexico.
That victim and his fellow slain officer were then dumped near a motel off Mexican Federal Highway 15 outside Navolato, near the ranch, federal prosecutors said. It was revealed during the SEDENA leaks that Los Chapitos had infiltrated the Sinaloa State Police.
Control of Culiacan
In Culiacan and many other parts of Sinaloa, the Cartel exerts control through the Chapitos and even requires the payment of “taxes,” not only for permission to traffic drugs other than fentanyl, but also on goods like beer, toilet paper, and electronics. Firearms are carried openly in the city by traffickers and sicarios loyal to Los Chapitos but prohibited for individuals who are not affiliated with them.
Of the three of “El Chapo’s” sons charged, only Ovidio Guzmán López has been captured. He was arrested in January in Sinaloa, Culiacan.
“Death and destruction are central to their whole operation,” DEA chief Anne Milgram Milgram said Friday, calling the Chapitos and the global network they operate “a network that fuels violence and death on both sides of the border.”
