Drug lord Chapo’s wife ‘afraid for his life’

MEXICO CITY: The wife of Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman complained in a television interview about his treatment in prison and said she fears for his life.

Emma Coronel, the mother of Guzman’s US-born twin girls, told Telemundo that the authorities “want to make him pay for his escape” in July, when he embarrassed the government by tunnelling out of prison.

“I am afraid for his life. We don’t know if he’s eating well. We don’t know what his situation is because we haven’t seen him,” the 26-yearold former beauty queen said, according to excerpts released on Friday.

“They say that they are not punishing him. Of course they are. They are there with him, watching him in his cell. They are right there, all day long,” she said.

“They don’t let him sleep. He has no privacy, not even to go to the restroom,” Coronel said in the interview, which will be broadcast in full on Sunday by the US-based Spanish-language network.

Eduardo Guerrero, the head of Mexico’s penitentiary system, said last month that she was not allow to see Guzman ,58, because he had not provided documents to prove that he divorced from his previous wife, casting doubt on the validity of his marriage to Coronel.

Guzman and Coronel were reportedly married in 2007 in the northern state of Durango, when she was 18 years old. — AFP