El Chapo’s lawyer asks to push back trial

NEW YORK: The lawyer for imprisoned drug kingpin Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman on Friday asked for his client’s trial to be postponed, arguing that thousands of new documents produced by the prosecution would make it impossible to prepare the defense in time.

In a motion filed Friday, lawyer Eduardo Balarezo said he learned Tuesday that the US government had produced around 117,000 audio files and 1,125 pages of documents – along with pictures and video – two months before the trial scheduled for Sept 5.

“The government’s last-minute production of massive quantities of discovery obliterates any semblance of due process and Mr Guzman’s ability to have a fair trial,” Balarezo said.

It comes as Mexico on Friday extradited to the United States a potentially ‘key witness’ against Guzman, the deputy attorney general said.

Mexican Guzman has been held in solitary confinement in the US since he was extradited there by Mexican authorities in January 2017.

He is waiting to stand trial in New York in September, accused of running the Sinaloa crime syndicate, one of the world’s biggest drug trade empires.

Damaso Lopez, known as ‘The Lawyer’ and once Guzman’s right-hand man, “was handed over in Juarez, Chihuahua” in the country’s north, deputy attorney general Alberto Elias said in a message to the press. — AFP