US charges 28 members of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel including El Chapo’s sons

The attorney general, Merrick Garland, announced the charges on Friday alongside the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) chief, Anne Milgram, and other top federal prosecutors. The charges were filed against cartel leaders, as well alleged chemical suppliers, lab managers, fentanyl traffickers, security leaders, financiers and weapons traffickers.

The indictments also charge Chinese and Guatemalan citizens accused of supplying precursor chemicals required to make fentanyl. Others charged in the cases include those accused of running drug labs and providing security and weapons for the drug trafficking operation, prosecutors said.

Nearly 107,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in the US in 2021. The Drug Enforcement Administration says most the fentanyl trafficked in the United States comes from the Sinaloa cartel.

The Sinaloa cartel's notorious drug lord was convicted in 2019 of running an industrial-scale smuggling operation. At his trial, prosecutors said evidence gathered since the late 1980s showed he and his murderous cartel made billions of dollars by smuggling tons of cocaine, heroin, meth and marijuana into the US.

Eight of those charged in Friday's case have been arrested and remain in custody of law enforcement officials outside of the US. The US government is offering rewards for several others charged in the case.

Zambada had been rumoured to be in poor health and isolated in the mountains leading the sons to try to assert a stronger role to keep the cartel together.

The DEA said it investigated the case in 10 countries: Australia, Austria, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Greece, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama and the United States.

"Death and destruction are central to their whole operation," Milgram said of the cartel.