The aircraft, the official said, took off around 8:00 in the morning and the respective coordination was carried out at the Hermosillo airport, where she said, “the phone call was received where the images from the airport security cameras are being kept safe.”
The aircraft, he added, took off with one crew member, a pilot, in this case Larry Curtis Parker.
The secretary also indicated that the Mexican government had in its possession all the monitoring of the pilot, the entries and exits to Mexico, “who is in the status of a visitor, he is not registered as an authority nor does he work in the embassy, he is not considered a private pilot, as a visitor, he is not even considered a migrant, the information so far is only about a pilot,” she explained.
He also detailed that Larry Curtis Parker was piloting a Cessna 205 type plane.
On July 27, journalist Peniley Ramírez announced in her column published in the newspaper Reform that pilot Larry Curtis Parker sought her out to distance himself from the case.
The journalist explained that Curtis Parker is actually an American businessman who usually travels from New Mexico to Sonora, aboard a Cessna plane, but that he had nothing to do with the arrest of the former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel.
On July 25, the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a statement celebrating the arrest of Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada-García and Joaquín Guzmán López by U.S. authorities.
In the statement, the DHS shared two photographs showing agents from the Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) office walking towards a plane to carry out the arrest of the drug lord.
In this case, the plane is not a Cessna 205 type aircraft, but a larger and more luxurious Beechcraft King Air turboprop aircraft.
The photographs of the plane in which “El Mayo” was allegedly transported to the US coincide with the agency’s reports Reutersaccording to which a worker at the Santa Teresa airport near El Paso said he saw a Beechcraft King Air land on the runway, where federal agents were already waiting.
“Two individuals got off the plane (…) and were calmly taken into custody,” said the man, who refused to reveal his identity for fear of his safety, the agency reported.
Regarding the pilot of the plane, last Friday, August 9, the US ambassador, Ken Salazar, also ruled out that the pilot and the plane that took “Mayo” to the US were from the US government and assured that it was rather an operation between cartels.
He added that the plane left Sinaloa for Santa Teresa without having previously submitted a flight plan that had been registered with US agencies.
“The pilot of the plane was not, is not an employee of the United States, is not a person employed by us in the United States and is not a citizen of the United States,” he said.
On Monday, August 12, President López Obrador asked the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) to continue requesting more information from the US government regarding what happened to the pilot of the aircraft that transported the “Mayo.”
