“El Chapo is now an old story,” Hope said. In the wake of Guzman’s arrest and extradition, alleged capo Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada is believed to have long-ago consolidated control of the Sinaloa cartel.

Mexican security analyst Alejandro Hope said Guzman’s fate will have “no impact” on trafficking. The sentencing was headline news in Mexico, but it was seen as unlikely to make a ripple in terms of the country’s politics, security or the unabated drug trade. goverment could collect the multibillion-dollar forfeiture. They said witnesses’ descriptions of El Chapo leading a lavish lifestyle featuring private planes, beachfront villas and a private zoo were overblown, and that there’s no chance the U.S. He famously gave an interview to American actor Sean Penn while he was a fugitive, hiding in the mountains after accomplices built a long tunnel to help him escape from a Mexican prison.Īt the trial, Guzman’s lawyers argued he was the fall guy for other kingpins who were better at paying off top Mexican politicians and law enforcement officials to protect them while the U.S. While the trial was dominated by Guzman’s persona as a near-mythical outlaw who carried a diamond-encrusted handgun and stayed one step ahead of the law, the jury never heard from Guzman himself, except when he told the judge he wouldn’t testify.īut evidence at Guzman’s trial suggested his decision to stay quiet at the defense table was against his nature: Cooperating witnesses told jurors he was a fan of his own rags-to-riches narco story, always eager to find an author or screenwriter to tell it. authorities have kept him in an ultra-secure unit at a Manhattan jail and under close guard at his appearances at the Brooklyn courthouse where his case unfolded. Guzman has been largely cut off from the outside world since his extradition in 2017. We can’t have a situation where the jurors are running around lying to a judge about what they were doing.” “A fair outcome was a fair trial - that’s all we wanted,” defense attorney Jeffrey Lichtman told reporters Wednesday outside the federal courthouse. They also claimed his trial was tainted by jurors improperly viewing media coverage of the highly publicized case. The defense argued he was framed by other traffickers who became government witnesses so they could get breaks in their own cases. They also said his “army of sicarios” was under orders to kidnap, torture and murder anyone who got in his way. The evidence at an 11-week trial showed that Guzman’s Sinaloa cartel was responsible for smuggling mountains of cocaine and other drugs into the United States during his 25-year reign, prosecutors said in recent court papers.

El chapo escape prison 2024