• OzzModz is no longer taking registrations. All registrations are being redirected to Snog's Site
    All addons and support is available there now.

Manhunt for 'El Chapo' races clock

L

Luke Skywalker

Super Moderator
{vb:raw ozzmodz_postquote}:
Get the news
Log In or Subscribe to skip

164 [h=6]Share This Story![/h]Let friends in your social network know what you are reading about

635723760552365748-AFP-542540787.jpg
[h=4]Manhunt for 'El Chapo' races clock[/h]An intense manhunt for Mexico's most wanted drug lord raced the clock Monday as authorities sought to recapture "El Chapo" before his trail went cold and he regained full command of the powerful, violent

{# #}
[h=4]Sent![/h]A link has been sent to your friend's email address.



[h=4]Posted![/h]A link has been posted to your Facebook feed.



[h=6]Join the Nation's Conversation[/h]To find out more about Facebook commenting please read the Conversation Guidelines and FAQs






29906170001_4352601707001_thumb-Wochit80838933.jpg
[h=2]UP NEXT[/h][h=2]03[/h]


Authorities are racing against the clock to track down notorious drug lord Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman ((pron GOOZE-men)) after his escape from a Mexican maximum security prison Saturday night. Wochit


Handout photo released by the Attorney General of Mexico showing Mexico's Attorney General, Arely Gomez, looking at the alleged end of the tunnel through which Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman could have escaped from the Altiplano prison.(Photo: AFP/attorney general of Mexico)


An intense manhunt for Mexico's most wanted drug lord was racing the clock Monday as authorities sought to recapture "El Chapo" before his trail went cold and he regained full command of the powerful, violent Sinaloa drug cartel.
Flights were suspended, airports searched, highway checkpoints established and border crossings scrutinized after Joaquin Guzman slipped out of a maximum security prison Saturday night.
But it may be too late. Former DEA administrator Peter Bensinger told USA TODAY he would not be surprised if a plane had been waiting when Guzman emerged from a hidden, mile-long tunnel.
"He has all the money in the world and lots of people willing to help him," said Bensinger, who called the escape a "travesty."
?Photos posted by one of Guzman's sons to a Mexican drug blog claim to show Guzman in a small airplane and a public place after the breakout, the San Antonio Express-News reported. The photos and the date they were taken have not been verified.
Bensinger said it would take a worldwide manhunt to track Guzman down. That's not a new phenomenon for the ruthless kingpin who already has been featured on the U.S. DEA's 10 Most Wanted list.
Guzman was first captured in Guatemala in June 1993, extradited to Mexico and sentenced to 20 years in a maximum security prison — from which he escaped in January 2001.
U.S. and Mexican officials collaborated on his recapture at a resort in Mazatlan, Mexico, in February 2014. He vowed then to escape again, and internal DEA documents obtained by the Associated Press reveal that U.S. drug agents were tipped that an escape plan was in the works a month after his capture.
El Chapo — or "Shorty" — faces multiple drug trafficking and organized crime charges in Mexico and the United States. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said the Justice Department was ready to aid in Guzman's "swift capture."
635723005505817997-AFP-542515602.jpg
Mugshot of Mexican drug trafficker Joaquin Guzman Loera, aka "el Chapo Guzman."<span style="color: Red;">*</span>(Photo: Attorney General of Mexico via AFP/Getty Images)

Guzman's empire extends throughout North America, Europe and Australia. Violence to control the drug trade has claimed an estimated 100,000 lives across Mexico over the last several years.
In Mexico, "Indignacion!" was a recurring theme on newspapers and websites reporting El Chapo's most recent escape. President Enrique Pena Nieto called the escape "an affront to the Mexican state," but expressed confidence that law enforcement would recapture Guzman.
"It's more than an affront," Bensinger said. "It's a disaster."
Bensinger said Guzman, who Interpol says is 58, will find it easier to control his cartel without requiring messengers to shuttle his orders from prison.
Pena Nieto has ordered Interior Secretary Miguel Angel Osorio Chong to coordinate the effort to rearrest Guzman. He ordered Public Security Commissioner Monte Alejandro Rubido to strengthen prison security and Attorney General Arely Gomez to determine which prison officials at Altiplano prison, about 55 miles west of Mexico City, were complicit in the escape.
The internal DEA documents said the efforts involved threatening or bribing guards and other corrections officials. More than a dozen prison employees have been interviewed since the escape.
Jimmy Gurulé, a Notre Dame law professor and a former assistant U.S. attorney general and under secretary of the Treasury, said the escape is an embarrassment for prison officials and government officials — all the way up to Pena Nieto.
"It's a humiliation and an embarrassment to the Mexican government," Gurulé said. "The question is whether the political pressure that builds — if any — as a result of El Chapo's escape places enough pressure on the government to bring him to justice."
Gurulé said Guzman's escape illustrates vast and insatiable corruption in Mexico.
"Public corruption involving high-level drug kingpins has been an issue and a problem that has been plaguing the Mexican government for at least the last 35 years," said Gurulé, who prosecuted the killers of Drug Enforcement Administration officer Enrique "Kiki" Camarena during the 1980s. "These guys continue to operate with virtual impunity. In many cases, their weaponry exceeds that of the police who are investigating them.
"They're so wealthy that they can bribe police officials, prison and government officials, which I'm sure is the case here."
Even if Guzman is recaptured, Gurulé said the prison he escaped from was supposed to be the most secure in Mexico.
"There's still a major question about whether he'll be captured. If he's captured, then what?" Gurulé said. "He's able to construct this sophisticated tunnel and literally walk out of the prison. What it tells you is that there is no prison that is secure enough to hold him" in Mexico.
While Guzman was in prison, U.S. authorities were cracking down on his cartel.
In September, nearly 1,000 federal, state, and local law enforcement officers seized approximately $100 million in cash, arrested nine people, and searched dozens of businesses in the Los Angeles downtown fashion district in connection with alleged money laundering for Mexican drug cartels.
The investigation was "specifically aimed at the Sinaloa Cartel and its activities, including narcotics trafficking, hostage taking, and money laundering in Los Angeles and elsewhere in the U.S. and Mexico," the Justice Department said at the time.
Since 2008, a Chicago-based investigation of the Sinaloa cartel has seized $30 million, 11 tons of cocaine, 2,200 pounds of marijuana, 500 pounds of methamphetamines and 150 pounds of heroin as of January 2015, according to an indictment there.
Bensinger said Guzman should have been in a U.S. prison.
"Mexico said he'd serve 100 to 200 years," Bensinger said. "That didn't last very long."
[h=6]TOP VIDEOS[/h]


0) { %> 0) { %>
0) { %>




Powered By WizardRSS.com | Full Text RSS Feed
Click to expand...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top