Coming to America: El Chapo could fight extradition for years

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[h=4]Coming to America: El Chapo could fight extradition for years[/h]Drug lord Joaquin Guzmán might fight to avoid extradition to the United States.

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Mexico's attorney general said Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman wanted a movie made about his life and accepted an interview with Sean Penn and Mexican actress Kate del Castillo. VPC


Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman(Photo: AFP/Getty Images)


It took six months of hard work for Mexican authorities to track down notorious drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzmán. It could take years of hard work to extradite him to the United States.
José Manuel Merino Madrid, who oversees extradition efforts in Mexico for that nation's attorney general, told Mexico's Radio Formula on Monday that lawyers for<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Guzmán<span style="color: Red;">*</span>could drag out the extradition process for up to a year.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Juan Masini, a lawyer who has served as a U.S. federal prosecutor and attache to<span style="color: Red;">*</span>the U.S. embassy in Mexico City, says that might be a conservative estimate.
Masini told USA TODAY<span style="color: Red;">*</span>he's confident that the U.S. Justice Department ultimately will win the battle to ship<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Guzmán to the U.S. to face a myriad of murder, kidnapping,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>drug trafficking and organized crime charges. But he counsels patience.
"Theoretically the (Guzmán)<span style="color: Red;">*</span>lawyers<span style="color: Red;">*</span>could waive a hearing and the Mexican government could send him right away," Masini<span style="color: Red;">*</span>said. "But if he wants to fight it, under Mexican law he is entitled to challenge a lot of procedures. It could take years."
Guzmán made world headlines in July with a dramatic escape from Mexico's maximum security Altiplano prison. Prison video showed him ducking<span style="color: Red;">*</span>into a shower area of his cell. From there he fled through a tunnel into the night.
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Months later,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Guzmán sought out producers and actors<span style="color: Red;">*</span>for a biographical film about his life,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Mexico Attorney General Arely Gomez said. Guzman's contact with Academy Award-winning actor Sean Penn<span style="color: Red;">*</span>led authorities to a Guzmán<span style="color: Red;">*</span>hiding place in October, but Guzman escaped. He was finally<span style="color: Red;">*</span>nabbed Friday in<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Los Mochis, a Mexican coastal city of 250,000 in Guzmán's home state of Sinaloa.
The Mexican government has said it will support the U.S. extradition request. That represents a 180-degree turn from 2014, when<span style="color: Red;">*</span>then-attorney general Jesús Murillo Karam said Guzmán would go to the United States after serving his sentence in Mexico “(in) about 300, 400 years.”
Juan Pablo Badillo, a lawyer for<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Guzmán, has made it clear his client won't go quietly, telling Milenio TV that the first paperwork aimed at blocking extradition already has been filed.
One hurdle that should easily be cleared is the issue of capital punishment, Masini said. Mexico has no capital punishment and will require an assurance from U.S. officials that no effort will be made to execute Guzman. But lawyers can challenge whether the extradition documents provide probable cause, they can challenge the reliability of witnesses —<span style="color: Red;">*</span>they can pick through the paperwork and challenge everything, Masini said.
"They don't have to raise the challenges all at once, either," Masini said. "You can have his lawyers milking it teat by teat till the milk dries out."
Masini noted that Mexican elections take place in two years. Currently, Mexican officials have made it clear they support extraditing Guzmán to the U.S. But the political winds could change direction as elections draw near, he said. Even if the courts approve extradition, the government could have a change of heart and block it.
Masini noted that the cost of litigation likely won't be an issue for<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Guzmán. U.S. indictments claim the El Chapo's organization has netted billions of dollars.
"It all depends on how hard his lawyers want to push it," Masini said. "I have been involved in extraditions that took months. But others have taken years."
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