‘El Chapo’ may be beyond pursuit
An intense manhunt for Mexico’s most-wanted drug lord raced the clock Monday as authorities sought to recapture “El Chapo” before his trail went cold and he regained full command of the powerful, violent Sinaloa drug cartel.
Flights were suspended, airports searched, highway checkpoints established and border crossings scrutinized after Joaquin Guzman slipped out of a maximum security prison Saturday night.
It may be too late. Former DEA administrator Peter Bensinger told USA TODAY he would not be surprised if a plane was waiting when Guzman emerged from a hidden, mile-long tunnel.
“He has all the money in the world and lots of people willing to help him,” said Bensinger, who called the escape a “travesty.”
Photos posted by one of Guzman’s sons to a Mexican drug blog claim to show Guzman in a small airplane and a public place after the breakout, the San Anto
nio Express-News reported. The photos and the date they were taken have not been verified.
Bensinger said it would take a worldwide manhunt to track Guzman down. That’s not a new phenomenon for the ruthless kingpin who has been featured on the U.S. DEA’s 10 Most-Wanted list.
Guzman was first captured in Guatemala in June 1993, extradited to Mexico and sentenced to 20 years in a maximum security prison — from which he escaped in January 2001.
U.S. and Mexican officials collaborated on his recapture at a resort in Mazatlan, Mexico, in February 2014. He vowed to escape again, and internal DEA documents obtained by the Associated Press reveal that U.S. drug agents were tipped that an escape plan was in the works a month after his capture.
El Chapo — or “Shorty” — faces multiple drug-trafficking and organized crime charges in Mexico and the USA.
Attorney General Loretta Lynch said the Justice Depart- ment was ready to aid in Guzman’s “swift capture.”
Guzman’s empire extends throughout North America, Europe and Australia. Violence to control the drug trade has claimed about 100,000 lives across Mexico over the past several years.
In Mexico, “Indignacion!” was a recurring theme on newspapers and websites reporting El Chapo’s most recent escape. President Enrique Peña Nieto called the escape “an affront to the Mexican state” but expressed confidence that law enforcement would recapture Guzman.
“It’s more than an affront,” Bensinger said. “It’s a disaster.”
Bensinger said Guzman, who Interpol says is 58, will find it easier to control his cartel without requiring messengers to shuttle his orders from prison.
Peña Nieto has ordered Interior Secretary Miguel Angel Osorio Chong to coordinate the effort to rearrest Guzman. He ordered Public Security Commissioner Monte Alejandro Rubido to strengthen prison security and Attorney General Arely Gomez to determine whether prison officials at Altiplano prison, about 55 miles west of Mexico City, were complicit in the escape.
The internal DEA documents said the efforts involved threatening or bribing guards and other corrections officials. More than a dozen prison employees have been interviewed since the escape.
Jimmy Gurulé, a Notre Dame law professor and a former assistant U.S. attorney general and undersecretary of the Treasury, said the escape is an embarrassment for prison officials and government officials — all the way up to Peña Nieto.
“The question is whether the political pressure that builds — if any — as a result of El Chapo’s escape places enough pressure on the government to bring him to justice,” he said.
“He has all the money in the world and lots of people willing to help him.” Peter Bensinger, former DEA administrator