Protecting Witnesses for the Trial of El Chapo
International drug lords sometimes kill people who plan to take the witness stand against them. It has happened so often in Mexico, for example, that some have described the country’s witness protection program as a witness detection program, or a hit list.
As the authorities in New York prepare for the trial next month of one of the world’s most famous drug lord — Joaquín Guzmán Loera, who is best known as El Chapo — they have taken extraordinary steps to keep those who will testify from getting killed. Mr. Guzmán’s lawyers say those strict protective orders have made mounting a defense more challenging.
Here are few of the ways the prosecution has kept the witnesses under a veil of secrecy:
Prosecutors have argued that Mr. Guzmán presents an “extreme danger” to the former allies, rivals and underlings who will testify against him. The government has refused to identify the witnesses in public papers, saying that if it does, the Sinaloa drug cartel, which Mr. Guzmán ran for 20 years, could seek revenge.
Mr. Guzmán’s lawyer, A. Eduar- do Balarezo, has argued that hiding witnesses’ identities will hinder his ability to devise a defense.
But court documents and reports have provided clues about who will testify against Mr. Guzmán on November 5.
They include Pedro and Margarito Flores, two brothers who oversaw the distribution of hundreds of millions of dollars in cocaine across the United States; Vincente Zambada Niebla, the son of Ismael Zambada Garciá, Mr. Guzmán’s deputy; Damaso Lopez Nuñez, who helped Mr. Guzmán escape prison in 2001; and Mr. Lopez’s son, Dámaso López Serrano, who pleaded guilty in January to charges of importing cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine into the United States.
Some of the government’s witnesses are already in jail and are being held in what are known as protective custody units, according to court papers. Others are in the witness protection program in undisclosed locations and have been given new identities.
Prosecutors have also had concerns about the safety of the jury in the case. Earlier this year, they persuaded a federal judge, Brian M. Cogan, to allow the jurors to serve anonymously.
Strict protective orders of witnesses are necessary because Mr. Guzmán has a history of killing and kidnapping those who have dared to speak against him, prosecutors said.
Mr. Guzmán has been accused of ordering the deaths of thousands. That is on top of charges that he smuggled more than 200 tons of cocaine into the United States.
Before his extradition, Mr. Guzmán also escaped two times from prisons in Mexico in a pair of daring jailbreaks.
Mr. Guzmán’s lawyers have dismissed the notion that he presents a threat to anyone, given that he has spent the past two years in what is called 10 South, the maximum-security wing of the Metropolitan Correctional Center, New York City’s most impenetrable jail.
He is permitted visits only from his lawyers and his 7-year- old daughters. Every month, he is allowed two 15-minute phone calls with his mother and his sister, to which the government is listening. Other than that, he is “completely isolated from the world outside of his dismal cell,” wrote Mr. Balarezo last month.
“In fact,” he wrote, “unless the government is suggesting that the defense team will disseminate hit orders from Mr. Guzmán, there is no realistic way for him to do anything” to the witnesses at all.