Where is El Chapo ? Drug Kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman was the former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel. He built an international criminal empire by trafficking cocaine, heroin, and marijuana. On the Internet, people want to know where El Chapo is now. This article will help you learn more about him. Let’s find him out.
Who Is El Chapo?
Joaquin Archivaldo Guzman Loera Has Several Nicknames, Including “el Chapo” and “el Rapido.” The name “El Chapo,” which means “shorty” in English, was given to him because of his height.
After coming from a poor farming family, the 64-year-old was in charge of the Sinaloa Cartel, a criminal group named after the Mexican Pacific Coast. After his rival from the Gulf Cartel, Osiel Cardenas, was caught in 2003, El Chapo became the most powerful drug lord in the country.
Between 2009 and 2013, Forbes called him “one of the most powerful people in the world,” and the U.S. Treasury called him “the most powerful drug trafficker in the world.”
The US Office of Public Affairs says that Guzman was the “principal leader of the Sinaloa Cartel,” an international drug trafficking group based in Mexico that was responsible for importing and distributing more than a million kilogrammes of cocaine, marijuana, methamphetamine, and heroin in the US.
He was nicknamed “El Rapido” because of how quickly he moved drugs from Mexico to America for the Colombian Cartels. Drugs were brought into the U.S. by the Cartel using fishing boats, submarines, carbon fibre planes, trains with secret compartments, and even underground tunnels that ran across borders.
When the drugs got to America, they were sold to wholesalers all over the country, including in New York, Miami, Atlanta, Chicago, Arizona, and Los Angeles.
Guzman used complicated plans to wash the billions of dollars he made from selling drugs, such as smuggling large amounts of cash from the US to Mexico and breaking into US-based insurance companies, reloadable debit cards, and a number of shell corporations, such as a juice company and a fish flour business.
The organisation relied on a large network of corrupt government employees and officials to protect and advance the interests of the Sinaloa Cartel.
Where Is “Mexican Drug Lord” El Chapo Guzman Now?
Guzman is currently incarcerated at the Adx Florence United States Penitentiary Maximum Facility.
El Chapo was sent to the high-security Slammer, also known as “The Alcatraz of the Rockies,” to stop him from trying to escape. This was done after he made two daring escapes from Mexican prisons in 2001 and 2014. According to Usa Today, no prisoner has ever escaped from Adx Florence.
There are razor-wire fences, gun towers, heavily armed guards, attack dogs, and snipers in the gun towers to protect the prison in the middle of nowhere. He went to the facility on June 19, two days after he got a life sentence.
He joined well-known figures from organized crime like Kaboni Savage and Luis Felipe there. El Chapo spends 23 hours a day alone in a 7-by-12-foot concrete cell with double doors. He is allowed one hour outside to get some fresh air.
His lawyer, Mariel Colon, said that the harsh conditions at Supermax Prison have hurt his physical health, but “he still has clear thinking.” In 2011, 11 inmates filed a federal class-action lawsuit against Adx Florence after being locked up for 23 hours a day.
They said they were mistreated constantly and that mental health problems were not diagnosed. According to a report by Amnesty International, prisoners spend years in solitary confinement and often go days “without hearing more than a few words.”
Human contact is almost nonexistent. They eat their meals alone in their cells, just feet from their toilets. Guzman’s lawyers are fighting to have him sent back to Mexico to finish serving his sentence, and his lawyers in the United States are still appealing the judge’s decision.
Because of the coronavirus pandemic, only his two twin daughters, Emma Coronel and Aispuro, who are 9 years old, and his lawyers can visit him.
Chapo Guzman’s Two Escapes From Prison
He was facing a 20-year sentence for murder and drug trafficking when he went to prison in 1993. He was afraid he would be sent to the U.S. El Chapo’s first daring escape happened in 2001, when he hid in a laundry cart and paid off guards to get out of the maximum-security Mexican prison Puente Grande in the state of Jalisco.
On January 19, 2001, his electronically locked cell was opened, and prison guards walked him through unlocked hallways with a cart of dirty laundry until he reached the parking lot and jumped into the trunk of a Chevrolet Monte Carlo.
El Chapo was caught by the Mexican Navy on February 22, 2014, after hiding for days in tunnels to avoid authorities and the combined $7.5 million bounty offered by Mexico and the US. He had gotten away from the police and the $7.5 million reward that the US and Mexico had put on his head.
El Chapo wore a GPS watch that was smuggled in by his contacts. This made it possible for other members of the cartel to find out where he was. Coronel, his wife, is said to have planned the escape with other members of the cartel.
The complex plan also included buying land close to the prison and getting ready with a steady supply of guns and an armoured truck. After a shootout on January 8, 2016, the Mexican Marines and Federal Police caught up with Guzman again. Later, he was sent back to the US to face criminal charges there.
Emma Coronel Aispuro, Guzmán’s wife, was arrested in the U.S. in 2021 and charged with being a part of his drug empire. Later that year, she admitted to a number of charges and was given a three-year prison sentence.
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