Mexican Drug Lord ‘El Chapo’ Found Guilty

Mexican drug lord Joaquin Guzman, alias “El Chapo,” has been found guilty by a New York jury.

He was on Tuesday found guilty after a three-month drug trafficking trial and six days of deliberation.

The verdict could result in life behind bars for the 61-year-old former head of the Sinaloa cartel, who was accused of smuggling 155 tons of cocaine and other drugs into the United States over a 25-year-period.

Prosecutors spent years piecing together a sweeping case against Guzman, who was extradited in 2017 after twice escaping prison in Mexico — first hidden in a laundry cart, then slipping down a tunnel that reached his prison shower.

Guzman has been branded the world’s biggest drug lord since Colombia’s Pablo Escobar, who was dubbed “The King of Cocaine” and was one of the wealthiest men in the world until police shot him dead in 1993.

The Sinaloa cartel that Guzman founded in 1989 is still hugely powerful. His co- defendant Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada remains at large, and violent drug trafficking continues unabated in Mexico.

Last year, there was a record 29,000 murders in Mexico. In the United States, opioid addiction has spiralled into an epidemic. In 2016, an average of 174 Americans died every day from drug overdoses.

According to the indictment, the Sinaloa cartel, which Guzman is accused of leading from 1989 to 2014, became “the largest drug trafficking organization in the world… with thousands of members.”

US prosecutors contend that from 1989 to 2014, the cartel smuggled at least 340,892 pounds (154,626 kilograms) of cocaine into the United States, as well as heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana, raking in $14 billion.

Guzman pleads not guilty, but the government has presented so much evidence — more than 300,000 pages and at least 117,000 audio recordings — that the defence complains they haven’t had enough time to review it all.