Mexican drug lord “El Chapo”
willing to plead guilty if he’s sent to medium-security U.S. prison.
MEXICO CITY — Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman is willing to accept extradition and plead guilty to charges in a United States court if he can negotiate an “unelevated” prison sentence in a medium security prison, his lawyer has told reporters here.
In an interview Thursday with Radio Formula of Mexico City, Guzman’s attorney, Jose Refugio Rodriguez, said his client had decided to try to negotiate such a course of action because of what he described as poor treatment in the Altiplano prison where he is being held.
Prison guards are waking Guzman every four hours to verify that he hasn’t escaped, according to Rodriguez. The resulting stress and sleeplessness have caused the drug lord to suffer severe headaches, he added.
“Tell me what person could tolerate not sleeping,” he said.
Rodriguez said he had contacted an American attorney named William Stuttgart about negotiating terms of the extradition with U.S. authorities.
In a recent interview published in Tribune Newspapers, Guzman’s wife, Emma Coronel Aispuro, said her husband’s prison treatment was inhumane and said his life was in danger.
Attorneys in at least seven U.S. jurisdictions would like to try Guzman on murder, drug trafficking and organized crime charges.
As head of the Sinaloa drug cartel, Guzman directed the shipment of untold tons of cocaine, heroin and marijuana to the U.S. over a two-decade span.
Law enforcement officials said he will be sent where prosecutors have gathered the strongest evidence, most likely New York or Chicago, according to sources familiar with the discussions.
A spokesman for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, which helped Mexican authorities track Guzman, said the case “is out of our hands.”
Guzman, one of the world’s most-wanted criminals, was recaptured Jan. 8 after a bloody shootout in the Mexican coastal town of Los Mochis. He had escaped from prison in July, his second escape from a maximum security prison, using a mile-long tunnel and help from security guards.
The Mexican attorney general’s office announced the day after the capture that it had begun the process of extraditing Guzman to face charges in the U.S. The government had refused to consider such a move when Guzman was recaptured in February 2014 after more than a decade on the lam following a 2001 escape.
On Jan. 23, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto said he had ordered the attorney general’s office to “accelerate” the extradition process.