MEXICO CITY — Armed men entered through a window to ambush Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, the most elusive of the Sinaloa cartel’s leaders, who was then loaded onto a plane, drugged and spirited across the border to the United States, according to details revealed Monday in the plea hearing of the drug trafficker who abducted him.

Joaquín Guzmán López, the 39-year-old son of former Sinaloa cartel kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, pleaded guilty to two counts of drug trafficking and continuing criminal enterprise in federal court in Chicago after admitting his role in overseeing the transport of tens of thousands of kilograms (pounds) of drugs to the U.S.

As part of that plea agreement, U.S. prosecutors shared what had been one of the central questions in the hours and days immediately after

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