Mexico: Top drug lord Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman escapes

On Sunday, Mexico’s top police official, Commissioner Monte Alejandro Rubido, announced that drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, kingpin of the Sinaloa Cartel, had escaped from maximum security prison through a hatch in his cell’s shower that opened to a mile-long tunnel. Once authorities confirmed his escape they set up roadblocks and shut down the airport in nearby Toluca, the short news release from the security commission revealed.

“At 8:52 p.m. today, on the Permanent Video System used for monitoring at the Altiplano I federal prison, it was seen that Joaquin Guzman Loera approached the showers in section 20 of hall 2, where he regularly, in addition to personal hygiene, went to wash his belongings, ” the commission said in a statement. An alert was triggered when prison guards found his cell empty.

The elaborate underground escape route built allegedly without the detection of authorities allowed Guzman to do what Mexican officials promised would never happen after his re-capture past year – slip out of one of the country’s most secure penitentiaries for the second time.

And after years of frustrating authorities the elusive Mexican almost escaped capture altogether.

Through his Sinaloa drug cartel, Guzman became one of the world’s wealthiest men, amassing a personal fortune that Forbes estimated at over $1 billion.

Guzman had been jailed there since February 2014. He says Guzman be should be extradited to the US if he’s captured again.

The breakout occurred in the State of Mexico, the home state of Pena Nieto, who took office in 2012 vowing to confront the cartels who have killed more than 100,000 people since 2007. His first escape was in 2001, when he snuck out of a prison in a laundry cart.

Guzman surrounded himself with ruthless guards and enforcers and reigned over a multibillion-dollar global drug empire that supplied much of the marijuana, cocaine and heroin peddled on the streets of the United States.

After his re-arrest past year, the U.S. requested Guzman’s extradition, but Mexican judges quickly ruled that he would first stand trial in Mexico.

Guzman, who faces multiple federal drug trafficking indictments in both the USA and Mexico, transformed the Sinaloa cartel from a garden-variety operation into Mexico’s most notorious group, building links to suppliers and retailers in far-flung countries like Malaysia and Australia, and starting feuds that rattled virtually the entire nation, Patrick Corcoran wrote for InSight Crime.

That Guzman tunneled out of the prison is particularly interesting given the Sinaloa cartel’s history of constructing the super tunnels underneath the border.

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The idea that he was some sort of Robin Hood character helped Guzman as he tried to evade arrest, Stewart said.