Drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman has escaped from a maximum-security prison in Mexico by tunneling out of the facility.
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When Guzman was not seen again for some time, officials checked his cell, found it empty, and issued an alert.
A search operation was immediately launched in the area around the prison.
A massive manhunt has begun for Guzman, who was being held in the maximum-security Altiplano prison, in the State of Mexico. Author Don Winslow referred to it as the most dominant organization responsible for supplying heroin in the northeastern U.S. In the US alone he is wanted on charges for multiple drug trafficking and organized crime offenses and was on the most wanted list of the DEA.
Guzman, 60, escaped from prison in January 2001 after serving almost eight years in prison.
His Sinaloa cartel empire still stretches throughout North America and reaches as far away as Europe and Australia.
Guzman’s cartel has been heavily involved in a drug feud in Mexico which is believed to have led to 100,000 deaths.
Guzman’s Sinaloa cartel, named after his home state and known for beheading its enemies or hanging their bodies in public places, built tunnels under the US-Mexico border to move marijuana.
It is the second time in 14 years that Guzman has broken out of prison.
Guards at the Altiplano Federal Prison discovered that Guzman, known as “El Chapo“, was missing during a routine check on Saturday. The flight of Guzman, who became an nearly legendary figure in villages scattered in the sierra where he grew up in northwestern Mexico, seriously undermines Pena Nieto’s pledge to bring order to a country racked by years of gang violence. That risk ‘does not exist, ‘ Murillo Karam said.
He had a $5m (£3m) U.S. bounty on his head when he was recaptured in 2014 by Mexican and U.S. authorities in the seaside resort of Mazatlan. A spokesman says now that he has escaped, Guzman will formally regain the title this week.
Since the government was elected in 2012 authorities have arrested or killed six drugs lords, including Guzman, who was caught by authorities for the first time in Guatemala in 1993. Security forces chased him for several days through Culiacan, the capital of the Sinaloa state.
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Altiplano prison also houses Zetas drug cartel leader Miguel Angel Trevino and Edgar Valdes “La Barbie” Villarreal of the Beltran Leyva Cartel, the Associated Press reports.
