Is Joaquim ‘El Chapo’ Guzman Loera at it, once more? The Mexican drug lord and head of the infamous Sinaloa cartel, who’s at a most safety jail in Florence, Colorado, serving a lifer and extra, has written a letter to the New York Decide who sentenced him complaining of “discriminatory” therapy. The I-Crew of the web site ABC7 Chicago Information and Climate has reported that the practically four-page letter, written in March, was translated into English and posted in his courtroom file solely just lately.
The situations within the impregnable jail, the place he’s watched nearly around the clock, “are inhuman”, writes El Chapo (the Quick One). “I’ve been right here for 9 months, and have spoken to my lawyer solely 9 occasions,” he writes. “That is discriminatory.” The letter is addressed to Decide Brian Cogan, who heard his case in New York.
There has additionally been a point out of some procedural courtesies, regardless that the case concluded a while in the past. Whereas the letter in itself could not produce any outcomes, specialists who’ve been monitoring his profession are questioning whether or not Guzman has one thing else up his sleeve. As a result of the final time he complained of poor services and discrimination, it was a precursor to his escape from Altiplano most safety federal jail in Mexico.
Escape from Altiplano
In a daring escape that’s harking back to the climax of The Shawshank Redemption, Guzman orchestrated the jail break in 2015 with the surface assist of his spouse Emma Coronel, sons, and Damaso Lopez, a cartel affiliate who later grew to become an approver and testified in opposition to his former boss.
In response to Lopez, Guzman’s lawyer would ship notes from the gangster, whom Lopez referred to as “mi compadre” (my buddy), which he would, in flip, convey to Coronel. His spouse too would obtain messages from Guzman throughout her visits to him in jail. Guzman instructed them to buy weapons, a pickup truck, a chunk of land close to the jail, and lease a warehouse.
Guzman’s sons – Joaquin Jr., Alfredo, Ivan, and Ovidio—purchased the land and dug a tunnel to Guzman’s jail cell. He escaped from the cell to the tunnel the place a bike and a driver awaited him. The tunnel was geared up with lighting, air flow and even had a rail for the bike. The escape reportedly took half-hour.
They drove by way of the tunnel to the piece of land from the place Guzman was taken to a warehouse. He then travelled to a different metropolis, the place a aircraft took him to a protected hideout close to his hometown Sinaloa.
He was arrested once more in January 2016 and was extradited to the US in 2017.
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The escape from Altiplano was not his first jail break—he escaped from Mexico’s Puente Grande maximum-security jail after bribing the jail officers. Whereas the official account has it that he was smuggled out of the jail in a laundry cart by a jail official, journalist Anabel Hernandez, amongst others, in his guide Narcoland, claims that Guzman merely walked out of the jail.
Can ‘El Chapo’ do it once more?
The letter has prompted jail officers to consider that the drug lord could be planning one other escape. He’s presently lodged in SuperMax jail in Colorado, often known as the “Alcatraz of the Rockies.”
However the SuperMax jail, or ADX Florence Jail, isn’t any Mexico jail. Hailed as a ‘high-tech model of hell’, it homes a number of the most infamous and high-profile criminals, together with serial killers, mobsters, cult leaders, and drug kingpins.
The inmates stay in near-continuous solitary confinement with hardly any actions, little contact with different inmates or time exterior their cells. Positioned on 37 acres of land, the cells of this jail are particularly designed to be sure that the inmates have no idea their location within the advanced. All that they’ll see is the sky and the roof by way of the window slits within the jail, making it subsequent to unattainable to plan an escape; and nobody ever has accomplished it thus far.
Prisoners are underneath 24-hour supervision, and there may be excessive inmate-staff ratio, movement detectors, cameras, and as many as 1,400 remote-controlled metal doorways. Closely armed guards patrol the compound and there may be 12-foot razor-wire fence surrounding the compound.
Why is the letter vital?
Whereas it isn’t seemingly that El Chapo will script historical past by turning into the primary man to interrupt out of ADX Florence Jail, there’s a purpose why these monitoring the profession legal really feel that he could have one thing else up his sleeve. The letter comes after reviews that Coronel, who performed a serious function in his 2015 jail break, has been moved to a midway home in California earlier than her eventual launch in September. The letter comes barely a number of months earlier than her launch.
Thirty-four-year-old Coronel, a former teen magnificence queen, acquired married to Guzman when she was 18. She was convicted of drug trafficking and cash laundering expenses in 2021 and was sentenced to a few years in jail. She had pleaded responsible to drug trafficking, conspiring to launder cash, and aiding the multibillion-dollar drug empire of her husband. She was additionally fined $1.5 million.
