Judge OKs 'date' with Elle Chapo
Drug lord can phone, but not see, wife
A Brooklyn federal judge has taken pity on lonely drug kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, ordering Thursday that the imprisoned Mexican drug lord be allowed to speak to his wife.
Guzman — who has been held under special provisions typically reserved for terrorists during his stay at the Manhattan Correctional Complex — can now talk to his beauty-queen spouse, Emma Coronel Aispuro, either over the phone or on pretaped video exchanges subject to screening by a monitor.
Unfortunately for the lovebirds, he’ll still remain in solitary confinement, and no contact is allowed.
The diminutive drug lord has repeatedly complained about his separation from his bombshell bride in court papers, noting that no one in the facility speaks Spanish and that his seclusion has brought on auditory hallucinations — which he describes as “Mexican music” playing on a loop in his head.
Judge Brian Cogan also put an end Thursday to defense attorneys’ requests that El Chapo be allowed into the general population while imprisoned, citing his past Hollywood-worthy escapes and connections to the bloodthirsty Sinaloa Cartel.
“While defendant was imprisoned in Mexico the first two times, he allegedly used third parties to further his narcotics-trafficking enterprise, to plan and execute his escapes from Mexican prisons, and to intimidate possible cooperators,” Cogan wrote.
The jurist added that he “would be hard pressed not to acknowledge that defendant’s widely publicized second escape from a Mexican maximum-security facility was accomplished under 24hour video surveillance in solitary confinement,” citing El Chapo’s summer 2015 jailbreak, in which he bore through his shower wall and rode a motorbike to freedom through a pre-dug, mile-long tunnel.
“The risk attendant to placing him in the general prison population is not lost on the court,” Cogan wrote.
He also denied defense requests to have the cartel leader’s cell inspected by Amnesty International, saying there would be “absolutely no reason” to bring in the group, except to “sensationalize an already sensationalized case.”
The drug kingpin’s complaints have included everything from not being able to drink water as he speaks to attorneys to the choice of television programs available to him during his daily one hour of exercise.
Cogan dryly wrote that, though strenuous, these conditions are not “cruel and unusual punishment.”
The order additionally reminded Guzman that his whining should be directed at the Bureau of Prisons.
El Chapo pleaded not guilty at his Jan. 20 arraignment to charges of money laundering, as well as manufacturing and distributing cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and marijuana.
He will be enjoying his first day of “freedom” from months in solitary during a court appearance on Friday — which happens to be Cinco de Mayo.