Inside The Unbelievable Arrest Of El Chapo

Inside The Unbelievable Arrest Of El Chapo

Inside The Unbelievable Arrest Of El Chapo
"My holidays are over," Joaquin Guzman said when he was finally caught.
01/11/2016 12:50 pm ET Updated Jan 11, 2016
Alexandra Alper and Ana Isabel Martinez
MEXICO METROPOLIS, Jan eleven (Reuters) - The world's most wanted drug boss, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, initially gave Mexican security forces the slip by opening a secret doorway hidden behind a mirror, and descending into a classy tunnel leading to town's drains.
The infamous head of the Sinaloa drug cartel was arrested on Friday after a months-lengthy manhunt that followed his escape - by tunneling out - from a Mexican maximum security jail in July.
Before he was caught, Guzman spent hours beneath ground as his henchmen sought to lure pursuing Marines up towards the roof of the home he had been holed up in, in Los Mochis in his native state of Sinaloa. As rains started to fill the drains, Guzman ultimately emerged from a manhole close to a fuel station a mile (1.5 km) across city and stole a automobile at gunpoint.
Video footage broadcast by Televisa on Monday confirmed Marines firing shots contained in the property during Friday's daybreak raid, and pictures of the inside of the ground ground dressing room where the tunnel entrance was hidden.
Marco Ugarte/ASSOCIATED PRESS
El Chapo initially fled via a secret doorway hidden behind a mirror, and descended into a sophisticated tunnel resulting in the city's drains.
It took the Marines ninety minutes to search out the tunnel entrance, giving Guzman an important headstart to flee. The lever to open the reinforced door behind the mirror was concealed in the mild of the dressing room.
Marines found another hole beneath a fridge which proved to be a crimson herring, the apparent beginnings of a challenge to build one other escape route. They also discovered two women cowering in one of many residence's five bogs.
"My holidays are over," Guzman mentioned when he was lastly caught, Televisa reported.
Objects discovered by Marines at the Los Mochis property included DVDs of La Reina Del Sur, a fictional collection a few female drug boss starring Mexican actress Kate del Castillo.
Del Castillo had accompanied Hollywood star Sean Penn to a secret meeting with Guzman at an undisclosed location in Mexico late final 12 months, which the government says unwittingly helped lead to his seize.
Guzman advised Penn in a secret interview revealed at the weekend by Rolling Stone journal that he felt neither remorse nor duty for smuggling billions of dollars worth of medicine into the United States. Nor does he contemplate himself a violent man despite numerous murders blamed on him, he informed Penn.
Penn has not commented for the reason that story broke.
Images broadcast by Televisa showed blood and bullet holes spattered on the white partitions of the house. In Chapo's downstairs bed room, there have been flatscreen TVs and a sofa plagued by injectable testosterone, syringes, antibiotics and condoms.
The marines busted by way of two doors to find 15 of Guzman's henchman armed with machine guns and rocket launchers. 5 of the hitmen have been killed in the shootout, one among them falling from the roof right down to a patio and one other escaping outside before dying on the street, Televisa mentioned.
Mexico is formally starting extradition proceedings towards Guzman, President Enrique Pena Nieto's government said late on Sunday, within the strongest sign yet that it intends to ship him to the United States. However the process could take a year or more.
Marco Ugarte/RELATED PRESS
Marines busted via two doors to find 15 of Guzman's henchman armed with machine guns and rocket launchers.
WANTED IN THE US
On Sunday, Interpol served two extradition warrants, the Mexican lawyer basic's workplace said, kick-beginning the most recent try to have Guzman face U.S. justice for the lots of of tonnes of cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin he has exported across the border.
Mexico repeatedly extradites main traffickers but the government resisted handing over Guzman after his arrest in February 2014 as a degree of national pride.
A prime official from the Mexican Lawyer Normal's office said on Monday it will take "not less than a year" for the extradition course of to maneuver ahead.
The U.S. authorities wants Guzman, who's believed to be fifty eight years previous, tried on costs starting from cash laundering to drug trafficking, kidnapping and murder.
Guzman, who's blamed for hundreds of deaths in Mexico and the United States from addiction and gang warfare, is facing open federal indictments in seven U.S. jurisdictions.
Chicago and Brooklyn, New York are leading contenders to host what could be one of the highest profile U.S. felony trials in years, former U.S. law enforcement officials said.
Chicago, which in 2013 dubbed Guzman its first Public Enemy No.1 since Al Capone, has a sweeping 2009 indictment in opposition to him, including a number of counts of conspiring to smuggle and distribute drugs, as well as cash laundering costs.
(With reporting by Frank Jack Daniel and Veronica Gomez in Mexico City and Tracy Rucinski and Mica Rosenberg; Writing by Simon Gardner; Modifying by Frances Kerry)
Additionally on HuffPost:
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A federal police inspects a drainage pipe outside the Altiplano most security jail in Almoloya, west of Mexico City, Sunday, July 12, 2015. (AP Picture/Marco Ugarte)
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