Proceedings to extradite druglord to US under way
MEXICO CITY: Mexico is formally starting extradition proceedings against captured druglord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, the government said late on Sunday, in the strongest sign yet it intends to send him to the US.
Guzman, the infamous boss of the Sinaloa drug cartel and the world’s most prominent drug trafficker, was arrested in north-western Mexico on Friday after a months-long manhunt.
On Sunday, Interpol served two extradition warrants, the Mexican attorney-general’s office said, kickstarting the latest attempt to have Guzman face US justice for the hundreds of tons of cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin he has exported across the border.
Mexico regularly extradites leading traffickers but the government of President Enrique Pena Nieto resisted handing over Guzman after his February 2014 arrest as a point of national pride.
But that position changed after he escaped from a maximum security prison in July – for the second time in his career – by slipping away through a 2.5km tunnel that surfaced in his cell.
Guzman was taken back to the same facility over the weekend but, to avoid a repeat of that humiliation, Mexico’s government says it aims to hand Guzman over to US justice as soon as possible. His lawyers are trying to block extradition.
The US government wants Guzman, who is believed to be 58 years old, tried on charges ranging from money laundering to drug trafficking, kidnapping and murder. Guzman, who is blamed for thousands of deaths in Mexico and the US from addiction and gang warfare, is facing open federal indictments in seven US jurisdictions.
Chicago and Brooklyn, New York, are leading contenders to host what would be one of the most high-profile US criminal trials in years, former US law enforcement officials said.
Chicago, which in 2013 dubbed Guzman its first Public Enemy No 1 since Al Capone, has a sweeping 2009 indictment against him, including several counts of conspiring to smuggle and distribute drugs, as well as money laundering charges. “It will be a fight between each jurisdiction, but logic would say that Chicago is the way to go,” said former US Drug Enforcement Administration agent Robert Mazur, who spent five years undercover infiltrating Colombia’s drug cartels and is now president of a Florida private investigations agency.
Mexico could extradite Guzman by midyear, sources familiar with the situation said. But he timing will depend on any injunctions filed by Guzman’s lawyers, meaning a US trial could still be a year or more away.
Mexican state sources say security forces were helped in their efforts to recapture Guzman when he met with Hollywood star Sean Penn late last year.