Reign of drugs lord ‘El Chapo’ ends in US life sentence
Crime boss Guzman to spend rest of life in prison after dramatic trial
JOAQUIN ‘El Chapo’ Guzman, the world’s most notorious drug kingpin, is expected to spend the rest of his life in a US jail after being convicted of running a criminal enterprise that amassed him a $14bn fortune.
Guzman (61) showed no emotion as a jury in New York found him guilty yesterday of 10 drug-related charges.
He will be sentenced on June 25, and will face a mandatory life term.
After the verdicts were read the Mexican drug lord, dressed in a charcoal suit and tie, leaned back in his chair and looked at his wife Emma Coronel Aispuro (29), a beauty queen. Both placed their hands on their hearts and gave each other a thumbs up. She had tears in her eyes.
The jury of five men and seven women, who have been under special protection since the trial began in November, deliberated for six days.
During the trial they heard allegations of gruesome murders, guns encrusted with diamonds or plated with gold, cocaine hidden in jalapeno cans, and a naked escape by Guzman with a mistress through a tunnel.
Prosecutors presented what they called an “avalanche” of evidence showing how Guzman, and his murderous Sinaloa cartel, made billions of dollars in profits by smuggling tons of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and cannabis into the US.
It was moved through secret border tunnels, flown to hidden airstrips, stashed in trucks, under cars, in train carriages, and even in small submarines.
The court heard an allegation that Enrique Pena Nieto, the former Mexican president, took a $100m bribe from Guzman.
Mr Pena Nieto denied it. Jurors were also told of Guzman’s personal brutality. On one occasion he was alleged to have kidnapped an associate who left his cartel, beating and shooting him, before having the victim buried alive.
A cast of 56 witnesses, many of them Mexican drug traffickers already in US prisons, gave evidence against him. They included a Colombian known as Chupeta, or Lollipop, whose face had been so altered by plastic surgery while on the run that the court collectively gasped at his appearance.
One of Guzman’s many mistresses, Lucero Guadalupe Sanchez Lopez, told how she was in bed in a safe house with the drug lord when he was in hiding in 2014. Mexican marines broke down the door but Guzman led her to a trap door beneath a bathtub, which led to an escape tunnel. “He was naked. He took off running,” she told the court.
Guzman’s nickname translates as “Shorty” and refers to his 5ft 6in height.
He was born Joaquin Guzman Loera and grew up in poverty in rural Mexico before ascending to run the Sinaloa cartel, becoming the world’s most notorious drug baron since Pablo Escobar, the Colombian who was shot dead by police in 1993.
Guzman’s status in Mexican folklore was cemented by two prison escapes. He was arrested again in 2016 and extradited to the US the following year. He will be held in a maximum security jail in the US to avoid the breakouts that embarrassed the Mexican government.
At his trial he declined to give evidence in his own defence. The jury only heard his voice, which was described as “sing-songy”, in recordings of telephone calls he had made. The defence case lasted only 30 minutes as his lawyers claimed he was a scapegoat for another drug lord.
Prosecutors in the US will now try to seize some of the billions of dollars Guzman made. (© Daily Telegraph London)