As we continue to follow the arrest of El Chapo, we got local reactions from Yuma residents to see if he should be taken to a USA or Mexican prison.
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“Given that ‘El Chapo” has already escaped from Mexican prisons twice, this third opportunity to bring him to justice can not be squandered”, Rubio said.
After Guzman’s previous arrest in 2014, Mexico said it would try him itself before considering his extradition to the USA, where he’s been indicted in at least five cities.
Then Guzman escaped a second time last July 11 under the noses of guards and prison officials at Mexico’s most secure lock-up, slipping out a tunnel so elaborate that it showed the country’s depth of corruption while thoroughly embarrassing the administration of President Enrique Pena Nieto. He managed to escape from the prison in 2001. The navy said five suspects died and six others were arrested.
The manhunt culminated in a house in Los Mochis, which authorities began to stake out in December, Gomez said.
After a morning shootout with Mexican marines in Los Mochis, a city in his native Sinaloa state, Guzmán was arrested along with six others, the Associated Press reports. Mexican forces arrived at the property but Guzman and an associate, Iván Gastélum Ávila, escaped through the storm drains amid the ensuing gunfight, Gomez Gonzalez added.
He was recaptured by Pena Nieto’s government in 2014 but escaped in July by capitalizing on the drug-tunneling skills his cartel honed on the USA border.
Guzman popped down a hidden hatch in the shower of his cell and fled his so-called maximum-security prison through a tunnel estimated to have taken a year to construct.
“I would like to inform Mexicans that Joaquin Guzman Loera has been detained”, Pena Nieto wrote in his Twitter account.
The fugitive had escaped maximum security prison in 2015, straining Mexico’s ties with the United States. They were fired on from inside the structure, it said.
He detailed that this arrest was the result of several months’ intelligence work, which focused on identifying, detaining and dismantling those within Guzman’s sphere of influence.
In a statement, Lynch said Guzman “will now have to answer for his alleged crimes” and congratulated Mexico’s government but did not directly address the sticky issue of extradition. Guzman’s drug-trafficking empire helped him amass a personal fortune of about $1 billion, according to Forbes magazine.
The Americans provided assistance in the search, but his capture was the Mexican government’s operation, the official said.
His rise was swift, setting up his own cartel, the Sinaloa, in the late 1980s, thought to be responsible for a quarter of all drugs entering the United States via Mexico.
Officially, Murillo Karam said Guzman would not be extradited until he finished serving his time in Mexico, a sentiment echoed by Mexico’s ambassador to the United States, Eduardo Medina-Mora.
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The Justice Department previously sought his extradition to the United States, and may do so again. On Friday, authorities launched on a home where Guzman was and were met by heavy gunfire.
