Mexico loses face over escape
The prison break gangster had been president’s biggest drug-bust trophy
ALMOLOYA DE JUAREZ, MEXICO // Mexican security forces were yesterday hunting drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman while authorities investigated whether he had inside help to escape prison through a tunnel under his cell’s shower.
It was the second time in 14 years that Guzman – head of the powerful Sinaloa drug cartel – managed to flee a maximum-security prison, dealing an embarrassing setback to president Enrique Pena Nieto. Troops and police were deployed to find Guzman after he vanished late on Saturday from the Altiplano prison, about 90 kilometres west of Mexico City, after 17 months behind bars.
Prosecutors questioned 30 prison employees, signalling suspicion of a possible inside job.
President Pena Nieto said Guzman’s escape was “an affront to the state” and demanded an investigation into whether prison guards had helped him.
Guzman was able to slip out even though surveillance cameras were trained on his cell. When he did not return from the shower, guards found a hole under the shower block 10 metres deep with a ladder in it.
The gap led to a 1.5-kilometre long tunnel equipped with a ventilation and light system. A motorcycle mounted on a rail was apparently used to transport tools and remove earth.
The tunnel led to a grey brick building on a hill surrounded by pastures in central Mexico State.
Prosecutors released a video showing the hole inside the building’s dirt- covered floor. A bed and kitchen were in the facility, indicating that people may have lived there.
As investigators tried to figure out how Guzman fled again, police and troops manned checkpoints and searched vehicles on nearby roads.
“If he’s not captured in the next 48 hours, he’ll have completely regained control of the Sinaloa cartel,” said Mike Vigil, a retired US drug enforcement administration (DEA) international operations chief.
“If he is able to make his way to Sinaloa, his native state, and gets into that mountainous range, it’s going to be very difficult to capture him because he enjoys the protection of local villagers.”
Several states, including Sinaloa, set up checkpoints on roads. Central Puebla state said it was using X-ray technology at toll booths to see through cars.
Troops in Guatemala launched a special operation at the border with Mexico. It was in that country that Guzman was first arrested in 1993.
Guzman’s first escape was in 2001, when he slipped past authorities by hiding in a laundry cart in western Jalisco state. Marines recaptured him in February last year in a predawn raid on a condo in Mazatlan, a Pacific resort in Sinaloa state, with the DEA’s help.
He was then jailed at Altiplano, which houses several infamous drug bosses captured during Mr Pena Nieto’s administration.
“El Chapo surely planned this from the time he was jailed and had very large internal and external support to escape,” said Raul Benitez Manaut, security expert at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. “There certainly was corruption inside and outside the prison,” he said.
Authorities had already investigated a strange prison visit to Guzman in March, when a woman managed to see him by using a fake ID to enter the jail.
His second escape was a major setback for Mr Pena Nieto, who was on a state visit to France. His government has won praise for capturing a slew of crime kingpins and Guzman, a diminutive but feared man whose nickname means “Shorty,” was his biggest trophy.
US attorney general Loretta Lynch said she shared Mexico’s “concern” about Guzman’s escape and offered help for his “swift recapture”. Some US prosecutors wanted to ask for his extradition following last year’s arrest but Mexican officials insisted on trying him first.
The US had offered a US$5 million (Dh18.4m) bounty before his previous arrest. The rich drug lord – once on
magazine’s billionaire list – married 18-year-old beauty queen Emma Coronel in 2007 and is believed to have 10 children with various women. Coronel was with him when he was arrested last year. His capture sparked small protests by supporters in Culiacan, Sinaloa’s capital, where Guzman nurtured a Robin Hood image.
In Culiacan, authorities found a home with a bathtub that rose up electronically to open a secret tunnel that he used to escape the authorities last year.