Jump to content

Drug lord, escape artist 'El Chapo' convicted by U.S. jury


webfact

Recommended Posts

Drug lord, escape artist 'El Chapo' convicted by U.S. jury

By Jonathan Stempel and Tina Bellon

 

 

2019-02-12T181809Z_3_LYNXNPEF1B1I5_RTROPTP_4_USA-MEXICO-EL-CHAPO.JPG

FILE PHOTO: FILE PHOTO: Recaptured drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman is escorted by soldiers at the hangar belonging to the office of the Attorney General in Mexico City, Mexico January 8, 2016. REUTERS/Henry Romero/File Photo

 

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The world's most infamous cartel boss Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, who rose from poverty in rural Mexico to amass billions of dollars, was found guilty in a U.S. court on Tuesday of smuggling tons of drugs to the United States over a violent, colourful, decades-long career.

 

Jurors in federal court in Brooklyn convicted Guzman, 61, head of the Sinaloa Cartel, on all 10 counts brought by U.S. prosecutors.

 

Richard Donoghue, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said he expected Guzman to receive life without parole when sentenced on June 25. "It is a sentence from which there is no escape and no return," Donoghue told reporters.

 

Guzman, one of the major figures in Mexican drug wars that have roiled the country since 2006, become almost legendary for escaping from Mexican high-security jails twice and avoiding massive manhunts. He cultivated a Robin Hood image among the poor in his home state of Sinaloa.

 

Guzman sat and showed no emotion while the verdict was read. Once the jury left the room, he and his wife Emma Coronel, put their hands to their hearts and gave each other the thumbs up sign. His wife shed tears.

 

Guzman, whose nickname means "Shorty," was extradited to the United States for trial in 2017 after he was arrested in Mexico the year before.

 

Though other high-ranking cartel figures had been extradited previously, Guzman was the first to go to trial instead of pleading guilty.

 

The 11-week trial, with testimony from more than 50 witnesses, offered an unprecedented look at the inner workings of the Sinaloa Cartel, named for the state in northwestern Mexico where Guzman was born in a poor mountain village.

 

The U.S. government said Guzman trafficked tons of cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamine into the United States over more than two decades, consolidating his power in Mexico through murders and wars with rival cartels.

 

Small in stature, Guzman's smuggling exploits, the violence he used and the sheer size of his illicit business made Guzman the world's most notorious drug baron since Colombia's Pablo Escobar, who was shot dead by police in 1993.

 

Guzman's lawyers say he was set up as a “fall guy” by Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, a powerful drug lord from Sinaloa who remains at large.

 

Jeffrey Lichtman, a lawyer for Guzman, told reporters after the verdict that the defence faced an uphill fight, given the amount of evidence the government presented, and the widespread perception that Guzman was already guilty.

 

"This was a case that was literally an avalanche, avalanche of evidence," Lichtman said. "Of course we're going to appeal."

 

DRUG WARS

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador was elected last year after promising a change to the deadly military-led war against drug gangs, suggesting a negotiated peace and amnesty for non-violent drug dealers, traffickers and farmers.

 

The most detailed evidence against Guzman came from more than a dozen former associates who struck deals to cooperate with U.S. prosecutors.

 

They told jurors how the Sinaloa Cartel gained power in the 1990s, eventually coming to control almost the entire Pacific coast of Mexico.

 

Guzman made a name for himself in the 1980s by building cross-border tunnels that allowed him to move cocaine from Mexico into the United States faster than anyone else.

 

The witnesses, who included some of Guzman's top lieutenants, a communications engineer and a onetime mistress, described how he built a sophisticated organization reminiscent of a multinational corporation.

 

He sent drugs northward with fleets of planes and boats, and had detailed accounting ledgers and an encryptedelectronic communication system run through secret computer servers in Canada, the court heard.

 

Guzman's attempt to take territory from a rival cartel was one of the main reasons for an explosion of drug violence in Mexico. The government has registered more than 250,000 homicides since it launched an aggressive war on cartels in 2006. A report by the U.S. Congressional Research Service last year estimated 150,000 of those deaths were tied to organised crime.

 

A former bodyguard testified that he watched Guzman kill three rival drug cartel members, including one victim who he shot and then ordered to be buried even as he was still gasping for air.

 

U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan told the jurors after the verdict that it was up to them to decide to talk to the media, but that he would advise against it. “Once that door is open, it can’t be closed again,” he said. 

 

Estimates of how much money Guzman made from drugs vary. In 2009, Forbes Magazine put him on its list of the world’s richest people, with an estimated $1 billion. It later dropped him from the list, saying it was too difficult to quantify his assets.

 

The U.S. Justice Department said in 2017 it sought forfeiture of more than $14 billion in drug proceeds and illicit profits from Guzman.

 

The most shocking allegation of corruption during the trial came from Guzman's former top aide Alex Cifuentes, who accused former Mexican president Enrique Pena Nieto of taking a $100 million bribe from Guzman. A spokesman for the ex-president has denied the claim.

 

In one of the trial's final days, Guzman told the judge he would not testify in his own defence. The same day, he grinned broadly at audience member Alejandro Edda, the Mexican actor who plays Guzman in the Netflix drama "Narcos."

 

Despite his ties to government officials, Guzman often lived on the run. Imprisoned in Mexico in 1993, he escaped in 2001 hidden in a laundry cart and spent the following years moving from one hideout to another in the mountains of Sinaloa, guarded by a private army.

 

He was seized again in 2014, but pulled off his best known escape the following year when he disappeared into a tunnel dug into his cell in a maximum security prison.

 

But the Mexican government says he blew his cover through a series of slip ups, including an attempt to make a movie about his life. He was finally recaptured in January 2016.

 

Despite Guzman's downfall, the Sinaloa Cartel still has the biggest U.S. distribution presence of Mexican cartels, followed by the fast-growing Jalisco New Generation Cartel, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

 

Together, they are the biggest producers of drugs sold on U.S. streets.

 

(Reporting by Brendan Pierson, Tina Bellon and Jonathan Stempel; Editing by Alistair Bell and Grant McCool)

 

reuters_logo.jpg

-- © Copyright Reuters 2019-02-13
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I can't help feeling a bit sad he was convicted. The drug war that El Chapo was an undoubted king is totally the result of US prohibition. It would always end this way, the demand is there the supply will be too, no matter what. The biggest and toughest will rise to the top. After El Chapo is removed a new one will have already taken his place, None of this affects the amount of drugs crossing the border, nor the violence perpetrated by rival drug gangs trying to snuff each other out.

 

 In many ways El Chapo deserves respect. It would have been all too easy to join one of these caravans of economic migrants and cross the southern border and enjoy a parasitical existence on the taxpayers dollar. But no, this was one determined, ruthless and highly clever individual that rose to the top in his game.

 

 What happens now? Probably some of his gang will know the jurors identities and will send a strong message to the US judicial system by some gruesome acts. And for El Chapo? I guess he will be on suicide watch, what is the point of living like this?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

'El Chapo' likely heading for Colorado prison where no one has escaped

By Alex Dobuzinskis

 

2019-02-12T224929Z_1_LYNXNPEF1B25B_RTROPTP_4_USA-MEXICO-EL-CHAPO-SUPERMAX.JPG

FILE PHOTO: A patrol vehicle is seen along the fencing at the Federal Correctional Complex, including the Administrative Maximum Penitentiary or "Supermax" prison, in Florence, Colorado February 21,2007. REUTERS/Rick Wilking/File Photo

 

(Reuters) - Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, the Mexican found guilty in a U.S. court on Tuesday of running a criminal enterprise that smuggled drugs into the United States, is likely headed to a "supermax" prison where repeating his past escapes would be nearly impossible.

 

No one has broken out of Administrative Maximum Facility (ADX) in Florence, Colorado, since it opened in 1994 to house the most dangerous inmates in the U.S. prison system.

 

"ADX is the kind of prison that was designed for a high-profile inmate like El Chapo," Larry Levine, a former federal inmate who is the director and founder of Wall Street Prison Consultants, said in a phone interview.

 

2019-02-12T224929Z_1_LYNXNPEF1B25C_RTROPTP_4_USA-MEXICO-EL-CHAPO-SUPERMAX.JPG

FILE PHOTO: The Federal Correctional Complex, including the Administrative Maximum Penitentiary or "Supermax" prison, is seen in Florence, Colorado February 21,2007. Supermax houses terrorists and the most violent inmates. REUTERS/Rick Wilking/File Photo

 

Guzman, 61, the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel who escaped twice from maximum-security Mexican prisons before his most recent capture in 2016, faces a possible life prison sentence at a hearing scheduled for June 25 in New York.

 

U.S. authorities have been tight-lipped about where Guzman will be imprisoned. But it has been widely anticipated that, if convicted, he would be sent to ADX Florence, ever since his extradition to the United States in January 2017.

 

"For someone like Guzman, the chances of escape from a facility like that are nil," said L. Thomas Kucharski, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

 

'ALCATRAZ OF THE ROCKIES'

Officials from the U.S. Bureau of Prisons (BOP) could not be reached for comment on Tuesday.

 

ADX Florence, located in a complex of prisons in a remote area about 115 miles (185 km) south of Denver, is nicknamed "Alcatraz of the Rockies" after the prison in San Francisco Bay that held gangster Al Capone in the 1930s and other notorious criminals.

 

ADX Florence inmates are held in specially designed "control units" that function as prisons within prisons.

 

"It's like a self-contained area within a self-contained area within a self-contained area," Levine said.

 

The prisoners are confined to single-person cells for 22 or more hours a day, depriving them of virtually all contact with the outside world.

 

ADX Florence's most infamous inmates include Ramzi Yousef, mastermind of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Centre in New York; convicted Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, according to the BOP website.

 

Special restrictions are designed to ensure some inmates have no means of exerting influence or threats beyond prison walls, which is useful for U.S. authorities to control those with sway over militant groups or criminal enterprises.

 

Not all of the facility's prisoners are famous for their crimes. Some were transferred there because they attacked guards or inmates at other facilities, Levine said.

 

In fact, about 90 percent of the more than 400 inmates are there because of discipline issues, according to a report released last October by the District of Columbia Corrections Information Council.

 

Inside their cell, the most highly guarded inmates have a television with content designed to provide them with education, psychological help and religious services, the report said.

 

Each cell has a narrow window, 42 inches (107 cm) tall and angled toward the sky, and inmates cannot see each other from inside their units, it said.

 

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles; editing by Grant McCool)

 

reuters_logo.jpg

-- © Copyright Reuters 2019-02-13
Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, TopDeadSenter said:

In many ways El Chapo deserves respect. It would have been all too easy to join one of these caravans of economic migrants and cross the southern border and enjoy a parasitical existence on the taxpayers dollar. But no, this was one determined, ruthless and highly clever individual that rose to the top in his game.

Respect?He enjoyed the most parasitical existence imagenable!!!

An absolute animal!Just imagine the amount of sorrow he has inflicted on mankind!!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, TopDeadSenter said:

I can't help feeling a bit sad he was convicted. The drug war that El Chapo was an undoubted king is totally the result of US prohibition. It would always end this way, the demand is there the supply will be too, no matter what. The biggest and toughest will rise to the top. After El Chapo is removed a new one will have already taken his place, None of this affects the amount of drugs crossing the border, nor the violence perpetrated by rival drug gangs trying to snuff each other out.

 

 In many ways El Chapo deserves respect. It would have been all too easy to join one of these caravans of economic migrants and cross the southern border and enjoy a parasitical existence on the taxpayers dollar. But no, this was one determined, ruthless and highly clever individual that rose to the top in his game.

 

 What happens now? Probably some of his gang will know the jurors identities and will send a strong message to the US judicial system by some gruesome acts. And for El Chapo? I guess he will be on suicide watch, what is the point of living like this?

 

While I'm not a supporter of "The War On Drugs"   I can hardly believe any reasonably  intelligent person would profess respect for a person such as  Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

To make 1 million USD you need 10,000 notes of 100USD. The logistics of collecting and moving tens or hundreds of millions around are daunting and unimaginable without banking. Who is following the money ? Which banks ? No one asked. When I bought a sailing boat, nobody asked nothing. When I wanted to open a bank current account the compliance department runs all over me.  Why was the Chapo trial in Brooklyn ? My guess is that the drugs trade is as was the alcohol business in the Prohibition. We just are still waiting for the real Breaking News from the USA side.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 hours ago, TopDeadSenter said:

 In many ways El Chapo deserves respect. It would have been all too easy to join one of these caravans of economic migrants and cross the southern border and enjoy a parasitical existence on the taxpayers dollar. But no, this was one determined, ruthless and highly clever individual that rose to the top in his game.

So you admire this murderous drug lord more than the migrants who are just looking for honest work and better lives for their families.  This would be incredibly twisted...but it makes perfect sense coming from a hardcore Trump supporter.   

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.




×
×
  • Create New...