Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman has been extradited to the United States, the Mexican government confirmed on Thursday. This extradition came a little more than a year after the Mexican organized crime syndicate ‘Sinaloa Cartel’ leader was caught following his much talked about escape from the Federal Social Readaptation Center No. 1, a maximum-security prison in the State of Mexico, through a tunnel in his prison cell.
Charges on former leader of Sinaloa Cartel
Several U.S. jurisdictions are waiting to try the former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel on charges of drug trafficking and smuggling vast amounts of drugs into the country.
Guzman could face a life prison in U.S based on these charges. The former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel was facing two extradition requests - one from California and another from Texas.
How Guzman escaped twice
Guzman arrived in New York on a flight from Cuidad Juarez, where he was moved to a prison last year after he was rearrested post his second dramatic escape. The first time Guzman escaped from a Mexican prison in 2001, purportedly hidden in a laundry cart. The second-time Guzman slipped into a hole in his shower at Altiplano prison near Mexico City on July 11, 2015, and fled through a mile-long tunnel outfitted with a motorbike that led to a residential construction site.
While he was still on the run the second time, the case took an interesting twist when it came to light that actor Sean Penn travelled to Mexico to interview Guzman in a remote jungle for an article.
Guzman was recaptured in January of 2016 in the town of Los Mochis, almost six months after his escape.
The Justice Department said Guzman is charged in six separate indictments in the US and it also extended its gratitude to the Government of Mexico for their extensive cooperation and assistance in securing the extradition of Joaquin Archivaldo Guzman Loera (Guzman’s full name) to the US.
Guzman has been fighting to stay in Mexico but his appeals were rejected. He is now expected to appear in a US federal court in Brooklyn on Friday.
Sinaloa Cartel and its drug war with other cartels
The Sinaloa Cartel is an international drug trafficking, money laundering, and organized crime syndicate established during the mid-1980s, based primarily in the city of Culiacan, Sinaloa, with operations in the Mexican states of Baja California, Durango, Sonora, and Chihuahua.
The cartel is also known as the Guzman-Loera Organization and the Pacific Cartel, the latter due to the coast of Mexico from which it originated.
As of 2015, the Sinaloa Cartel was the most active drug cartel involved in smuggling illicit drugs into the United States and trafficking them throughout the United States. It was reported last year that Sinaloa Cartel was engaged in a bloody fight with another Mexico-based drug cartel over Manzanillo, the port located in the state of Colima.
