According to reports, Guzman was removed from Altiplano prison and transported to Ciudad Juarez in a jet, following which he was taken to the Cefereso 9 facility, which is just a few miles from the US border by helicopter. “I can’t say what the government is thinking”.
Advertisement
Mexican drug boss Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman was moved on Saturday from a jail in central Mexico to a prison in Ciudad Juarez on the USA border, a development that appears to bring him closer to extradition to the United States.
His lawyer, Juan Pablo Badillo, said Guzman was moved early on Saturday, but he was not sure why.
Mexico’s National Security Commission said the move was not related to his extradition, even though officials began the legal process to deport him to the USA shortly after his capture.
Notorious Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman was transferred on Saturday to a new prison near the Texas border.
He reassured Guzman’s lawyers are still working to avoid their client’s extradition to the United States.
Although not classified as a maximum-security prison, it has a section for highly risky prisoners that is “one of the safest”, a National Security Commission source said.
But Michael Vigil, the former head of worldwide operations for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, wondered at the logic of sending Guzman to a lesser lockup in territory firmly controlled by his Sinaloa cartel underlings.
Eduardo Sanchez, a spokesman for Mexico’s presidency, said Guzman’s transfer to the state of Chihuahua was due to upgrades at his previous location, the Altiplano jail in central Mexico, and not part of an effort to deport him to the United States.
In contradiction to what El Chapo’s attorneys are saying now, in March, Breitbart Texas’ Ildefonso Ortiz reported that the attorneys were requesting an expedited extradition to the United States.
The former leader of the Sinaloa drug cartel – one of Mexico’s most powerful – Guzman staged a spectacular jailbreak in July 2015, when he escaped through a hole in his jail cell’s shower that led to a 1.5-kilometer (one-mile) tunnel leading outside.
El Chapo’s lawyers are still trying to stop his extradition to the U.S., where he faces charges in several cities including New York, Chicago, and Miami.
Guzman had been remanded to Altiplano Jan. 8, after being recaptured in Los Mochis, in northeast Sinaloa state.
In 2001, Guzman is believed to have hidden in a laundry basket when he escaped from another maximum security prison in Puente Grande in western Jalisco state, where he was imprisoned since 1993.
Advertisement
Once he was returned to Altiplano, where officials reinforced the floors with metal bars and a 40-centimeter layer of concrete, Guzman was always under observation from a camera with no blind spots placed in the ceiling.
