'El Chapo' Guzmán Charged In Mexican Court With Drug Trafficking, Organized Crime

The Associated Press reported on Monday that Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán was formally charged on Sunday with drug trafficking and organized crime by Mexico's Federal Judicial Council. Up to now, El Universal reports, the Sinaloa cartel boss had been wanted for bribery and criminal conspiracy, charges for which he had been serving a 20-year sentence in jail when he escaped in 2001. A Mexican federal official told the AP that the new charges will at least delay Guzmán’s extradition to the United States, as Mexican authorities look to exact justice at home against a prized target in their war against drug cartels.

In a separate article, the AP noted that grand juries in at least seven US federal district courts have already brought formal charges against Guzmán, which include cocaine and heroin trafficking to criminal conspiracies involving murder and racketeering. Federal officials from Chicago and New York courts said they would seek to try the Sinaloa head in their jurisdiction. Steven Tiscione, an assistant federal attorney in Brooklyn told the news service in an email, “Yes, we will be seeking his extradition,” though he added that responsibility over whether Guzmán would be extradited fell to Washington.

According to El Universal, US intelligence officials say that an American wiretap on a phone belonging to a key accomplice led authorities to Guzmán’s main hideout, a house in the city of Culiacán in Sinaloa state. Guzmán was able to slip away, however, through an escape door beneath a bathtub, which led down into a system of tunnels connected to underground sewers. Manuel López Osorio, another collaborator, told authorities that he’d picked up El Chapo and his wife, the beauty queen Emma Coronel, and transported them to a condominium in the city of Mazatlán. Officials say that Mexican marines took a sleeping Guzmán – who they say awoke and scrambled for an assault rifle – by surprise, without a single shot fired. Searches of other properties belonging to Guzmán reportedly yielded some three tons of suspected cocaine and methamphetamine.