“Mission accomplished: we have him,” President Enrique Peña Nieto tweeted shortly after Mexican Marines confirmed the capture of fugitive Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman on January 8.
The apprehension of the world’s most wanted criminal in his home state of Sinaloa came six months after his audacious escape from a prison outside Mexico City stunned the nation.
Last Friday morning, working from a tip off, marines converged on a house in the port city of Los Mochis. They were fired on as they raided the property but Guzman had slipped out through a passage hidden behind a mirror that led down to the city’s drains.
Reports indicate that Guzman stole a car when he emerged from the drain but was only able to drive it about a kilometer before he experienced problems with the engine. He was apprehended outside a bank, surrendering without a fight. The Televisa network reported that on his arrest he told his captors, “My holidays are over.”
Five of Guzman’s henchmen were killed in the ferocious gunfight inside the safe house and six others arrested. One marine was slightly injured.
Guzman, the leader of the Sinaloa drug cartel, had been on the run for 13 years since he bolted from a Guadalajara prison in 2001. His escape from the Almoloya maximum security prison last July, 17 months after his arrest in February 2014, was a major embarrassment for the Peña Nieto administration. Incredibly, he got away through a tunnel leading from the shower area of his cell to a house construction site almost a mile away. It had taken a year to build. The escape triggered a massive manhunt, mostly concentrated in Sinaloa.
“Today our institutions have demonstrated one more time that our citizens can trust them, and our institutions are at the level needed to have the strength and determination to complete any mission that is granted to them,” Peña Nieto said Friday. His entire cabinet broke out into applause after he announced the capture.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) immediately sent its congratulations to the Mexican government.
Following his arrest, Guzman was returned to Almoloya, where reports suggest he is being moved from cell to cell on a daily basis to prevent any reoccurrence of his previous escape.
Guzman faces several indictments in U.S. courts on charges of smuggling millions of dollars’ worth of narcotics into the country. Senior Mexican government officials had balked at extraditing him but now appear to have changed their minds. However, the process could take a year of longer, legal analysts reckon.
It has been suggested that one reason why Mexico is reluctant to send Guzman into the U.S. court system is that he may start to spill the beans about his connections to prominent Mexican politicians.
The recapture of El Chapo has been manna from heaven for the media, Journalists are having a field day searching out news angles, not only his bizarre October 2015 meeting with actor Sean Penn (see story page 13), but also his obsession with Mexican actress Kate del Castillo, his partiality for flashy boutique shirts and his alleged treatment for erectile dysfunction.