El Chapo’s torture vids
Feds’ gruesome claim
El Chapo and his henchmen uploaded YouTube videos of them torturing rivals — whom he requested be brought to him “bound and helpless,” say prosecutors who want to use the disturbing footage at his upcoming trial.
In court papers filed this week, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn portrayed Chapo — whose real name is Joaquín Guzmán — as a cold and calculating leader who went to deadly lengths to protect his venerable Sinaloa drug cartel in Mexico. Chapo would order his
“sicarios” and “pistoleros” — hit men and gunmen — to “locate, kidnap, torture and interrogate” suspected members of rival gangs and videotape the brutality, prosecutors said in their filing.
“At the defendant’s explicit orders, his sicarios kidnapped rivals and brought them to him, often bound and helpless, and the defendant then personally interrogated the rivals,” they wrote.
“When they did not kill their rivals in shootouts, they abducted and interrogated them to garner intelligence about their rivals’ activities. The defendant ordered most of the captured rivals killed and their bodies disposed.”
In 2006, Chapo’s henchmen turned up two mem- bers of the rival Los Zetas cartel. After having lunch, he interrogated them and then had them beaten and shot in the head with a long gun, prosecutors wrote.
“The defendant then ordered his workers to dig a hole in the ground, throw the bodies in the hole and light the bodies on fire before burying them.”
One of the brutal interrogations posted on YouTube involved Chapo rival Israel Rincon Martinez, targeted for killing the son of one of Chapo’s allies.
In the 2010 footage, Rincon is bound and bruised before eventually being killed.
Prosecutors want jurors to see a 1993 video showing authorities seizing seven tons of cocaine in Tecate, Mexico, as well as seizures of heroin and cocaine in Queens and New Jersey. His trial is slated to begin on Sept. 5.