Latest
GOT HIM
Notorious drugs lord Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman arrives in New York after he loses extradition fight
NOTORIOUS Mexican drug lord El Chapo has arrived in New York after being extradited from Mexico.
The drugs baron was spotted being led into an aircraft hangar in Ronkonkoma, Long Island, last night.
The cartel kingpin - real name Joaquin Guzman - was one of the world's most wanted men until he was captured last January.
9
9
9
9
9
The U.S. government is seeking to seize £11.3billion in assets from the drug baron.
Mexican officials said the timing of the move was both a last-minute gift to outgoing U.S. President Barack Obama and an olive branch to Trump, who has regularly insulted Mexico and threatened to tear up the NAFTA trade agreement that underpins its economy.
Guzman, 59, arrived in a small jet at Long Island's MacArthur Airport after nightfall and left in a column of vehicles.
Later a police convoy believed to be carrying the kingpin arrived at Manhattan's Metropolitan Correctional Center, a maximum-security federal prison, with helicopters swooping overhead.
He had been on the run for six months since he famously escaped from Altiplano maximum-security jail in central Mexico through a mile-long tunnel in 2015.
Mexico agreed to hand him over to US authorities and today a court threw out his final challenge against extradition.
The foreign ministry said: "The government today handed Mr Guzman Loera to the US authorities."
RELATED STORIES
A senior US official said El Chapo was in US custody and was being flown to New York, the Associated Press reports.
The US Justice Department confirmed Guzman was "en route to the United States to face criminal charges in connection with his leadership of the Mexican organised crime syndicate known as the Sinaloa Cartel."
El Chapo was being held in a prison in the infamously violent border city of Juarez in the northern state of Chihuahua where his Sinaloa cartel won a bloody drug war against rivals.
9
A senior US law enforcement official based in Mexico told Reuters as he was handed over: "It's a good thing to finally get him to the US side."
He said he did not think Mexico put "a whole lot of thought" into the timing of the extradition - on the eve of Donald Trump's inauguration - "but it certainly isn't a bad thing."
Guzman was recaptured by marines in a four-hour gun battle that left five of his top lieutenants dead.
His lawyers had sought to block his extradition to the US.
In May, the Mexican foreign ministry approved extradition bids from California, where he is wanted for drug distribution, and Texas, where he faces charges including murder and money laundering.
He is also wanted by authorities in New York, Chicago and Miami.
Attorney Robert Capers said: "He's a man known for no other life than a life of crime, violence, death and destruction. And now he'll have to answer to that."
The Mexican government said the US has "given enough guarantees that the death penalty will not be applied".
9
9
9
A federal indictment in the Eastern District of New York, where Guzman is expected to be prosecuted, accuses him of overseeing a trafficking cartel with thousands of members and billions of dollars in profits laundered back to Mexico.
It says Guzman and other members of the Sinaloa cartel employed hit men who carried out murders, kidnappings and acts of torture.
Last month it was revealed El Chapo's henchmen initially tunnelled into the wrong cell before his infamous escape from Altiplano in 2015.
That was the second time Guzman had done a bunk from jail after he bribed guards to help him flee in a laundry cart in 2001.
Before his arrest in 2014, El Chapo was described as the world's biggest drug trafficker and most wanted man on the planet as he dominated the cocaine market.
A judge who has investigated some of Mexico’s biggest drug gangs – including El Chapo’s feared Sinaloa Cartel – was assassinated in October.
Two months earlier El Chapo's son Jesus Alfredo Guzman Salazar, 29, was among a group of six Sinaloa cartel members kidnapped by their rivals.
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at [email protected] or call 0207 782 4368
Topics