El Chapo prosecutors kept a lid on sorcery and sex claims

Newly unsealed documents from the US trial of Mexican drug lord Joaquin ‘‘El Chapo’’ Guzman detail behind-the-scenes efforts by prosecutors to keep out evidence potentially damaging to their witnesses and embarrassing to the US Government, including beliefs in mysticism, sex with minors, and secret deals with drug enforcement agents.

US District Judge Brian Cogan mostly barred defence attorneys from cross-examining the witnesses on the material during a trial that ended last month with the conviction of Mexico’s most notorious drug lord on drug and murder conspiracy charges.

A previous batch of documents unsealed in early February was the first to reveal previous statements by a key government cooperator, who told authorities that Guzman, pictured, had him drug girls as young as 13 before the Sinaloa cartel boss had sex with them at one of his Mexican hideouts in the late 2000s. Guzman has denied through his lawyers that this happened.

The allegations could have hurt the government case in the eyes of the jury because the same witness, Colombian drug trafficker Alex Cifuentes, admitted to sex with minors as well.

In the newly unsealed documents, prosecutors told the judge the ‘‘highly salacious details of sexual activity’’ were irrelevant to the case.

The government also argued against cross-examination of Cifuentes on ‘‘his extracurricular interests in the Illuminati, Freemasonry, other planets, other galaxies, UFOs and the idea that there was an impending apocalypse in 2012’’ – evidence that the defence wanted to use to suggest that Cifuentes was ‘‘mentally unstable.’’

The papers say ‘‘the use of witchcraft and sorcery was not uncommon in Mexico in 2011, which is in and around the time that [Cifuentes] was availing himself of similar services’’.

The documents show how prosecutors vigorously sought to keep the defence from challenging Vicente Zambada, son of cartel boss Ismael ‘‘El Mayo’’ Zambada, about his claims that he had been working for the US Drug Enforcement Administration as a confidential informant even as he was smuggling cocaine. In exchange for inside information on the cartel, he had been promised immunity from prosecution, according to his lawyers. –AP