Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto posted on his Twitter account, Friday, Jan. 8, 2016, that drug lord Joaquin “Chapo” Guzman has been recaptured.
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Guzman’s escape past year was a major embarrassment for the Pena Nieto government, exposing deep levels of corruption and an inability to mete out justice. A mile-long tunnel equipped with electric lights, rails and a motorbike came out directly into the shower of his prison cell and he simply slipped away.
According to the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) estimates he has surpassed the influence and reach of Pablo Escobar and considers him as “the godfather of the drug world”.
El Chapo, who smuggled drugs to the United States through the Sinaloa cartel that he led, escaped from Altiplano through a 1.5km tunnel.
That official said Friday’s raid on the house was related to the later capture of Guzman at the hotel.
Guzman is being transported back to Antiplano – the same maximum-security prison where he escaped on July 11 using an elaborate tunnel that was dug under his shower stall, Attorney General Arely Gomez Gonzalez said at a news conference late Friday.
Following his escape, shopkeepers began selling souvenirs such as baseball caps branded with “El Chapo” (Guzman’s nickname, meaning “Shorty”).
Still, many people in towns and villages across Mexico remember Guzman better for his squads of armed gunmen who carried out thousands of brutal slayings and kidnappings.
Guzman was captured on Feb 22, 2014, in the Sinaloa resort of Mazatlan.
The rivalry with other drug cartels has spurred an ongoing drug war that’s left thousands of Mexicans dead.
Few had thought Guzman would be taken alive, and few now believe Mexico will want to try to hold him a third time in Mexican prisons, from which he escaped in 2001 and 2015.
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.
Five people, reportedly members of Guzman’s crew, were killed in a raid on a house, and one marine was wounded. Early on Friday, the marines started an operation to capture the drug kingpin.
The U.S. government lamented Mexico’s refusal to extradite Guzman to the U.S., where he has been indicted in California and elsewhere because of his cartel’s expanding operations. But Guzman’s lawyers already had filed appeals and received injunctions that could delay the extradition process for months or even years.
More than a dozen prison and federal police officials have been arrested on charges of helping Guzman flee, along with several associates of the drug lord who worked from the outside on building the tunnel. After coming under fire for failing to do so the last time, Mexico’s Attorney General’s office said in July it had approved an order to extradite him north of the border.
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The encounter pushed Guzman deeper into Mexico’s notorious “Golden Triangle”, where the bulk of the country’s opium and marijuana are produced, limiting his communications and cutting down his security detail to a small core. He was found in a condo with his wife and their young twin daughters.
