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| Joaquin Guzman |
Mexico's billion dollar drugs lord known as Joaquin Guzman 'El Chapo' has gloated
on Twitter about his escape from a maximum security jail in Altiplano on Saturday by
taunting authorities and threatening US-presidential hopeful Donald Trump.
His audacious escape saw him dash through the mile-long tunnel
system, which led to a building under construction next to the prison - from
where he collected clothes left for him by his conspirators.
The tunnel contained air vents, electric lights, emergency oxygen
tanks - and even a motorbike on rails to speed his escape, according
to Mexico's National Security Commissioner Monte Alejandro Rubido.
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Authorities look into the entrance to a secret tunnel through which Guzman is believed to had fled
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The escape comes after Guzman's son, Ivan also hinted about his
father's plans for a daring escape from online earlier this month.
He put up a post on the social network saying 'good things come to
those who wait'… 'I won't lie, I have cried but I bring armed men and I promise
that soon the General will be back'.
Following his escape, El Chapo has taken to Twitter to hit back at
Trump, who has said that the Guzman embodies 'everything that is wrong with
Mexico' and warned Trump he would be sorry he spoke out against Mexico. He also
called death threats on those who have supposedly betrayed him, including El
Chabelo, the current incarcerated boss of Sinaloa's rival cartel the Zetas.
Guzman wrote: 'First to die is El Chabelo, for wanting to see me
die in prison.'
He then hinted that the authorities had been complicit in the
jailbreak by posting: 'The dog (slang for the Mexican government) dances for
money, and I've bought it.'
During his last escape, Guzman hired the help of the prison guards
during his first successful escape from maximum security prison, in which he
was hidden inside a laundry basket.
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Federal police check a house at the end of the tunnel through which he could have escaped
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Local media have now began questioning how no-one saw 3,250 tonnes
of earth that was removed to construct a tunnel a mile long, 80 centimetres
wide, and 1.7 metres tall. 2,652 cubic metres of earth would have to be
removed, enough to fill 379 dump trucks.
The prison staff are equipped with radar and electronic depth
testing equipment which they are required to use regularly specifically in
order to check for things like tunnels but nothing was ever reported.
Five days before his capture El Chapo fled from a military
operation aimed at his capture through a tunnel in his mansion connected to the
city's storm drains.
The tunnel was located below a bathtub, which raised itself
vertically by the flick of a switch, revealing escape tunnels.
The same device was found in seven of the 19 separate houses
belonging to El Chapo which the government seized following his capture.
Wanted by U.S. prosecutors and once featured in the Forbes list of
billionaires, Guzman was gone by the time guards entered his cell in Altiplano
prison in central Mexico, the CNS said.
Beneath a 50-cm by 50-cm hole in the cell's shower area, guards
found a ladder descending some 32 feet into the tunnel, which was about 5.6
feet high and 28-31 inches wide.
Prison workers were quickly detained over the escape.
Rubido said 18 officials from the penitentiary were being
interrogated at the unit specializing in organized crime at the Attorney
General's office.
According to Vice, Guzman enjoyed special privileges inside the prison
- including private audiences with his visitors - while other inmates had a
tougher time.
His escape is a major embarrassment to the administration of
Mexico's president Enrique Pena Nieto, which had received plaudits for its
aggressive approach to top drug lords. Since the government took office in late
2012, authorities have captured or killed six of them, including Guzman.
Pena Nieto, speaking in France where he is making an official visit,
said of the escape: 'This represents without a doubt an affront to the Mexican
state.
'But I also have confidence in the institutions of the Mexican
state ... that they have the strength and determination to recapture this
criminal.'
During Guzman's previous years as a fugitive, he transformed
himself from a lowly middleman into arguably the most powerful drug trafficker
in the world - and he was placed on the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's
most-wanted list.
His fortune is estimated at more than $1billion, according to
Forbes magazine - which listed him among the 'World's Most Powerful People' and
ranked him above the presidents of France and Venezuela.
Guzman was caught by authorities for the first time in Guatemala
in 1993, then he was extradited and sentenced to 20 years in prison in Mexico
for murder and drug trafficking.
He escaped from another maximum security prison, Puente Grande in
western Jalisco state, in 2001 with the help of prison guards.
He hid in a laundry cart to make his getaway, but there are
several theories as to how he got out
Guzman is known for his ability to pay off local residents and
even authorities, who tipped him off to security operations launched for his
capture.
THE BEAUTY QUEEN WIFE AND MOTHER TO HIS TWIN DAUGHTERS
Emma Coronel, Guzman's wife and mother to his twin daughters
He was finally tracked down to a modest beachside high-rise in the Pacific
Coast resort city of Mazatlan in February 2014, where he had been hiding with
his beauty-queen wife and twin daughters.
Emma Coronel, who was born in California, is a U.S. citizen, which
means she has the right to live in the United States. Her father was also a
drug lord who died in a shoot-out with the Mexican army.
She was sent to California to give birth so that her daughters
would be U.S. citizens too. Federal agents wanted to stop her, but had no
formal charges to file so had to let her go free.
Before security forces captured him, they went on a several-day
chase through Culiacan, the capital of his home Sinaloa state, for which the
cartel is named.
They found houses with steel-enforced doors and elaborate tunnels
- where Guzman had apparently been staying - that allowed him to escape through
the sewer system.
Earlier this year, the then Mexican Attorney General Jesus Murillo
Karam said that sending Guzman to the US, where he is wanted, would save Mexico
a lot of money, but keeping him there was a question of national sovereignty.
Murillo Karam dismissed concerns that Guzman would escape a second
time. That risk 'does not exist', he said. Murillo Karam has since been
replaced by Arely Gomez.
Mexican president Pena Nieto is currently in France for a state
visit. He is expected to make a statement later today.
It is believed he will not be cutting short his trip, but his
Interior Secretary Miguel Angel Osorio Chong - the Cabinet's head of security -
will return to Mexico from France.
In 1993, gunmen linked to the Tijuana-based Arrellano Felix cartel
attempted to assassinate Guzman at the Guadalajara airport but instead killed
Roman Catholic Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo - leading to outrage among
Mexicans.
Guzman was rumored to have once entered a restaurant in Culiacan,
the capital of Sinaloa state, where his henchmen confiscated every patron's
cellphone so their boss could eat without fear of an ambush.
He was also reported to have staged an elaborate public wedding in
2007 to an 18-year-old bride, which was attended by officials and local police.
Federal police say they raided the town that day but got there
just a few hours too late.
Guzman was known to move around frequently, using private
aircraft, bulletproof SUVs and even all-terrain vehicles
His location was part of Mexican folklore, with rumors circulating
of him being everywhere from Guatemala to almost every corner of Mexico,
especially its 'Golden Triangle', a mountainous, marijuana-growing region
straddling the northern states of Sinaloa, Durango and Chihuahua.
An archbishop in northern Durango state said in April 2009 that
Guzman lived in a town nearby. Days later, investigators found the bodies
of two slain army lieutenants with the note: 'Neither the government nor
priests can handle El Chapo.'
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Guzman is facing charges in the U.S., but Mexico was adamant that it would keep him in the country rather than handing him ove
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Reactions in the U.S. to Guzman's escape ranged from disbelief to
outrage, with some observers saying it dramatically illustrated the need for
captured cartel kingpins to be promptly extradited to the U.S.
Several U.S. attorneys' offices have indicted Guzman on
trafficking charges, including in Chicago, where several Guzman lieutenants
were successfully extradited, prosecuted and imprisoned. The U.S. had said
after Guzman's 2014 capture that it would file an extradition request, though
it's unclear if that already happened.
For its part, Mexico's government at the time denied the need to
extradite Guzman even as many expressed fears he would inevitably escape. He
had escaped before, in 2001, while serving a 20-year sentence in another
maximum-security prison in Mexico.
That air of self-confidence among Mexican authorities will be
harder to maintain if and when Mexico recaptures Guzman or nabs some other
cartel leader, Shirk said.
'The calls for extradition (to the U.S.) will be more intense' in
the wake of Guzman's escape, he said. 'It'll be more difficult for the Mexican
government to say, 'No, no. We have this under control.''
