Trial of accused drug lord ‘El Chapo’ begins
Guzman charged with crimes ranging from narcotics trafficking to murder
NEW YORK – Accused Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman won worldwide fame as a daring leader who twice staged breakouts from jails in his home country.
Now he’ll try to pull off another escape – to win an acquittal from an American jury that will hear evidence that he helped lead the world’s largest drug cartel in shipping tons of cocaine and other drugs into the United States.
Prosecutors made their opening statement Tuesday before the jury of seven women and five men in Brooklyn federal court, with the defense to follow.
The trial, expected to last as long as four months, is one of the highest-security court proceedings in New York City since the terrorism prosecutions of suspects in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and a related plot to bomb city landmarks.
The full name of the 61-year-old man at the center of the high-security trial is Joaquin Archivaldo Guzman Loera. A stocky 5-foot-6, he’s been dubbed El Chapo, Mexican slang for “shorty.”
Guzman is charged with 17 criminal counts including drug trafficking, conspiring to murder rivals, money laundering and weapons offenses.
During the early 2000s, he allegedly was a boss of the Sinaloa Cartel, the world’s largest drug-trafficking operation. Prosecutors say the enterprise imported tons of cocaine from South America into the United States.
The cartel manufactured and shipped similarly vast shipments of heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana across the nation’s southern border, Guzman’s indictment says.
Guzman and other alleged members of the cartel laundered billions of dollars in U.S. drug profits and sent the money to Mexico in vehicles with hidden compartments and other clandestine means, prosecutors say.
Hitmen called “sicarios” allegedly carried out murders, assaults and torture sessions at the behest of Guzman and other bosses of the cartel.
Guzman allegedly maintained his leadership role in the cartel even when he was behind bars in his native country.
Allegedly wielding wealth, power and intimidation, Guzmán demonstrated he could not be stopped or held for long.
He was captured in Guatemala on drug trafficking charges in 1993 and was extradited to Mexico for prosecution. He was serving a 20-year sentence in Mexico’s maximum-security Puente Grande prison when he allegedly bribed his way to a successful escape in 2001.
He was recaptured in Mexico in February 2014.
Guzman gained international fame the following year when he escaped from Mexico’s maximum security Altiplano federal prison via a mile-long underground tunnel that associates dug to the shower in his cell. The tunnel to freedom came complete with an escape motorcycle inside.
The dramatic breakout triggered a worldwide manhunt that ended in January 2016 in a shootout with heavily armed Mexican military forces in Los Mochis, a coastal city in Sinaloa.
Guzman initially managed to escape from a heavily fortified home there, but was captured a short distance away.
The U.S. Marshals Service and other federal authorities have taken several security precautions to guard against future escapes.
Guzman was brought to New York in January 2017 after Mexican authorities authorized his extradition to face trial in Brooklyn.
He has been held in solitary confinement in a Manhattan’s high-security Metropolitan Correctional Center, where all of his activities are carefully monitored.
The Brooklyn Bridge, which spans the East River between the New York boroughs of Brooklyn and Manhattan, has been closed to traffic each time that heavily armed federal officials and New York City police have transported him from his cell to the federal courthouse.
Federal authorities have taken similar security precautions for jurors and potential witnesses for Guzman’s trial.
The names and other personal information of the jurors have been kept secret. Federal marshals will escort members of the panel to and from the courthouse for each session of the trial.
Prosecutors have held the names of their expected witnesses closely. But there have been signs that at least one of Guzman’s alleged cartel associates may testify against him and provide an insider’s testimony about the cartel’s operations.
Vicente Zambada Niebla, a son of alleged cartel boss Ismael Zambada Garcia, pleaded guilty to drug charges in Chicago federal court last week in an agreement with prosecutors.
The agreement requires Zambada Niebla to provide “complete and truthful testimony in any criminal, civil or administrative proceeding.”