Mexico (AFP) – The key moments of Mexico’s biggest drug trafficker, Joaquín Guzmán, 62-year-old “El Chapo”, from his first arrest in 1993 to his trial in New York, whose verdict will be delivered on Wednesday. Having climbed the powerful Guadalajara cartel before it was dissolved in 1989, “El Chapo” participated in the creation of the Sinaloa cartel.
His first catch and escape
On May 24, 1993, he escaped an assassination attempt by other traffickers at Guadalajara airport, which costs the life of Cardinal Juan Jesús Posadas Ocampo.Arrested on June 9, 1993 at the Mexican-Guatemala border, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison for his life sesinates and drug trafficking.
That’s what Joaquin Guzmán Loera looked like in the ’90s.
His second escape in a laundry cart
On January 19, 2001, he escaped from the high-security prison of Puente Grande in Jalisco, hidden in a cart with dirty clothes, thanks to the collaboration of numerous accomplices, including the center’s director and several guards. Thirteen years of clandestine life begin in which the fugitive, whose fortune exceeds $1 billion, according to Forbes magazine, builds a drug empire, controlling 25% of the drug trade in the United States.
He underwent several cosmetic surgeries. Photo: EFE
Chicago designates him “public enemy number one” of the city, a terminology not used since Al Capone.Es captured on February 22, 2014 by the Mexican Navy in Mazatlan (northwest).
After being captured in Mazatlan, Sinaloa, in 2014. Photo: EFE
Third escape by a tunel
He escaped for the second time on July 11, 2015 from the high-security prison of Altiplano, 90 km from Mexico, running a 1.5 km tunnel, dug under the shower of his cell, ventilated and illuminated, leading to a building under construction. Nicknamed “El Chapo” for its height (1.65 m), the “lord of the tunnels” had tens built under the U.S.-Mexico border to supply the drug. In October, she gives a secret interview with American actor Sean Penn, in the presence of Mexican actress Kate del Castillo, whom she reveres.
El Chapo and actor Sean Penn, who was given an interview. It is said that from that day on it began its tracking until the DEA found its exact location. Photo: Youtube
She, famous in Mexico for her role as head of a drug cartel in the telenovela “La Reina del Sur”, acted as intermediara. The day he dug his grave
This clandestine interview, of which the authorities were aware, led him to his undoing. It was detected in the jungle and was traced by the army until its capture, announced on January 8, 2016 by Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, in Los Mochis, in his stronghold of Sinaloa, after six months of escape. Back to The Altiplano prison, he is regularly changed from the cell. Video surveillance was reinforced, so as not to leave any blind angles in his cell. In addition, metal barriers are installed on the ground to prevent another tunnel from being dug.
Escorted by DEA elements during his extradition to the United States. Photo: AFP
On January 19, 2017, he was extradited to the United States and held in a high-security prison in Manhattan, New York, the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC), in a 5×3-meter prison, windowless and artificially illuminated permanently. He asks, in vain, for them to change his conditions of imprisonment, and even refuses to obtain earplugs. His trial begins in New York, amid high security measures, on November 5, 2018.
Of millennial and powerful, now only to be in drawings that he was made during his trial. Tomorrow will be his final sentence. Here when you last saw your sposa Emma Coronel in the court of NY. Photo: EFE
He is accused of co-directing the Sinaloa cartel for 25 years and importing at least 1,200 tons of cocaine, more than 49 tons of marijuana, more than 200 kilos of heroin and methamphetamines. He is convicted on 12 February 2019 of ten counts of the indictment, after three months of hearings, which brought to light the extreme violence and corruption of the cartels. The prosecution claims, on July 10, life imprisonment, coupled with a 30-year prison sentence.
The verdict will hear you tomorrow. He could end his days in “the prison of hell,” Florence’s maximum-security prison in Colorado, one of the safest and toughest in the country.
