Mexico’s First Gift to Trump: Drug Lord El Chapo Extradited to US
The Mexican drug lord will face drug trafficking charges after proceedings begin at a Brooklyn federal courthouse.
Infamous Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman was extradited to the US by the Mexican government on Thursday.
A federal law enforcement official informed that Guzman will face drug trafficking and other charges after proceedings begin at a Brooklyn federal courthouse starting Friday.
The convicted leader of the Sinaloa drug cartel, one of the world’s largest drug trafficking organisations, landed at MacArthur Airport on Long Island, New York on Thursday night. He is said to have spent the night at a maximum-security prison in Manhattan.
The move comes a day before Donald Trump is to be sworn in as the 45th President of the United States.
El Chapo’s Prison Escape
Guzman, 59, is also notorious for his prison escapes.
He first escaped from jail in 2001 and then spent more than a decade on the run before he was recaptured, only to escape again in 2015 via a mile-long tunnel dug to the shower in his cell.
The 2015 escape was highly embarrassing for the government of Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, and Mexican officials were seen as eager to hand the headache off to the US afterward.
In Mexico, Deputy Attorney General Alberto Elias Beltran told reporters late on Thursday that Guzman still faces formal charges in 10 other cases.
“When he completes his sentence in... the United States, he will return to Mexico to continue” the prosecutions, he said.
The US has been trying to get Guzman in a US court since he was first indicted in Southern California in the early 1990s. He faces the possibility of life in a US prison under indictments in six jurisdictions around the United States, including New York, San Diego, Chicago and Miami.
(With inputs from AP)
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)