‘El Chapo’ gets life and $12.6bn bill
MEXICAN drug lord ‘El Chapo’ was jailed for life yesterday – and ordered to forfeit $12.6billion (€11.23billion).
Joaquin Guzman, 62, was sentenced by a New York court following his conviction on 11 drug dealing, murder and money laundering charges.
More than 50 witnesses described how he would beat and kill those who stood in his way, burying some of them alive. One of Guzman’s henchmen told the jury that he had a ‘murder room’ in his mansion on the US border with a drain in the floor for blood. Another claimed he would drug and rape girls as young as 13 years old, calling them ‘his vitamins’.
Guzman was extradited to the US in 2017 when he was recaptured following an escape two years earlier from a maximum security prison in Mexico. His associates had dug a mile-long tunnel that was large enough for him to drive a motorcycle along.
The drugs baron thanked his family yesterday for giving him ‘the strength to bear this torture that I have been under for the past 30 months’. His 30-year-old fourth wife, Emma Coronel Aispuro, looked on from the public gallery in jewellery valued at €65,000. The couple have two daughters.
Guzman told the court that he had been treated inhumanely by the US authorities. ‘You denied me a fair trial when the whole world was watching,’ he added through a an interpreter.
‘When I was extradited to the United States, I expected to have a fair trial, but what happened was exactly the opposite.’ The court heard that Guzman – whose El Chapo nickname translates as Shorty – was considered the most powerful drug lord since Pablo Escobar, who was killed by Colombian police in 1993. Over his 25year reign, the Sinaloa cartel smuggled mountains of cocaine and other drugs into the United States.
His new home is likely to be Florence ADX, a ‘supermax’ prison in Colorado which is home to terrorists including ‘Unabomber’ Ted Kaczynski. The judge added an extra 30 years to Guzman’s life sentence to reflect the seriousness of the offences.
It remains unclear how the government plans to seize the $12.6billion in profits it believes Guzman’s empire made through drugs.