Story By: Angjela Trajkovska, Sub Editor: Michael Leidig, Agency: CEN
Notorious drug lord ‘El Chapo’ was planning a third escape from a maximum-security prison in 2016 before his extradition to United States.
The claim was made by politician and former National Security commissioner Renato Sales who told journalist Peniley Ramirez from the American Spanish-language network Univision about the alleged prison break after discovering “signs” of a third attempt in May 2016.
Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman Loera, considered to have been the most powerful drug trafficker in the world, was planning the escape to avoid extradition to the US, according to Sales.
Pictures Credit: CEN/Univision
The alleged plans led to the authorities transferring El Chapo from the ‘Altiplano’ prison in the town of Almoloya de Juarez in the central Mexican state of Mexico to a maximum security federal prison in Ciudad Juarez on the US border in the northern state of Chihuahua.
Reports said that El Chapo first escaped from the ‘Puente Grande’ prison in the western state of Jalisco in a laundry cart in January 2001.
He remained at large until his second arrest in February 2014.
In July 2015, the former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel reportedly escaped from Altiplano in a tunnel connected to his cell.
El Chapo was arrested again in January 2016 in the city of Los Mochis in Sinaloa.
Picture Credit: CEN
Sales claims that El Chapo was planning another escape from Altiplano the following year and that the authorities spotted the “signs” early on.
He said: “We checked those signs and made a decision to move him to a different prison.”
Sales added: “He reacted, thinking that we were in the process of extraditing him already, and asked ‘where are you taking me?’ He later figured out that he was in Ciudad Juarez.”
The Mexican politician said that the decision to move El Chapo was approved by the then president, Enrique Pena Nieto, and the interior secretary, Miguel Angel Osorio Chong.
However, El Chapo’s former lawyer Jose Refugio Rodriguez rejected Sales’ allegation and told Univision: “Joaquin Guzman lived a life of hell after they arrested him again. They never let him sleep, and every four hours he had to do a roll call.
“They watched him 24 hours a day. Where did this suggestion that he was going to escape come from?”
El Chapo was extradited to the US in January 2017 and found guilty of all charges at the United States District Court in New York in February this year. He is expected to be sentenced on 25th June.
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