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| Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman is escorted to a helicopter in handcuffs by Mexican navy marines at a navy hanger in Mexico City, Saturday, Feb. 22, 2014. A senior U.S. law enforcement official said Saturday, that Guzman, the head of Mexicoís Sinaloa Cartel, was captured alive overnight in the beach resort town of Mazatlan. Guzman faces multiple federal drug trafficking indictments in the U.S. and is on the Drug Enforcement Administrationís most-wanted list. |
MEXICO CITY
(AP) -- Mexican authorities captured the world's most powerful drug lord
in a resort city Saturday after a massive search through the home state
of the legendary capo whose global organization is the leading supplier
of cocaine to the United States.
Joaquin "El
Chapo" Guzman, 56, looked pudgy, bowed and much like his wanted photos
when he arrived in Mexico City from Mazatlan in Sinaloa state. He was
marched by masked marines across the airport tarmac to a helicopter
waiting to whisk him to jail.
Guzman was
arrested by the Mexican marines at 6:40 a.m. in a high-rise condominium
fronting the Pacific without a single shot fired. Mexican officials late
Saturday said he was apprehended with a man identified as Carlos Manuel
Hoo Ramirez, contradicting earlier reports that he was arrested with a
woman.
A U.S. official said that the U.S. Drug
Enforcement Administration and the Marshals Service were "heavily
involved" in the capture.
Another federal law
enforcement official said intelligence from a Homeland Security
Department investigation also helped lead U.S. and Mexican authorities
to his whereabouts.
Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to journalists.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder called the capture a "victory for the citizens of both Mexico and the United States."
Mexican
authorities, based on a series of arrests in recent months, got wind
that Guzman was moving around Culiacan, capital of his home state for
which the cartel is named.
Mexican Attorney
General Jesus Murillo Karam described an operation that took place
between Feb. 13 and 17 focused on seven homes connected by tunnels and
to the city's sewer system.
He said they had
Guzman in their sights several times during that period but were unable
to mount an operation earlier because of possible risks to the general
public. The house doors were reinforced with steel, which delayed entry
by law enforcement, presumably allowing Guzman to flee several attempts
at his capture before Saturday.
Murillo Karam didn't say how authorities traced him to Mazatlan.
A
U.S. law enforcement official said members of Guzman's security team
helped Mexican and U.S. authorities find him after they were arrested
earlier this month. The official was not authorized to discuss details
of the case by name and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Guzman
faces multiple federal drug trafficking indictments in the U.S. and is
on the DEA's most-wanted list. His drug empire stretches throughout
North America and reaches as far away as Europe and Australia. His
cartel has been heavily involved in the bloody drug war that has torn
through parts of Mexico for the last several years.
His
arrest followed the takedown of several top Sinaloa operatives in the
last few months and at least 10 mid-level cartel members in the last
week. The information leading to Guzman was gleaned from those arrested,
said Michael S. Vigil, a former senior DEA official who was briefed on
the operation.
The Mexican navy raided the
Culiacan house of Guzman's ex-wife, Griselda Lopez, earlier this week
and found a cache of weapons and a tunnel in one of the rooms that led
to the city's sewer system, leading authorities to believe Guzman barely
escaped, Vigil said.
As more people were arrested, more homes were raided.
"It became like a nuclear explosion where the mushroom started to expand throughout the city of Culiacan," Vigil said.
Authorities
learned that Guzman fled to nearby Mazatlan. He was arrested at the
Miramar condominiums, a 10-story, pearl-colored building with white
balconies overlooking the Pacific and a small pool in front. The
building is one of dozens of relatively modest, upper-middle-class
developments on the Mazatlan coastal promenade, with a couple of simple
couches in the lobby and a bare cement staircase leading up to the
condominiums.
"He got tired of living up in
the mountains and not being able to enjoy the comforts of his wealth. He
became complacent and starting coming into the city of Culiacan and
Mazatlan. That was a fatal error," said Vigil, adding that Guzman was
arrested with "a few" of his bodyguards nearby.
Vigil
said Mexico may decide to extradite Guzman to the U.S. to avoid any
possibility that he escapes from prison again, as he did in 2001 in a
laundry truck - a feat that fed his larger-than-life persona.
"It
would be a massive black eye on the (Mexican) government if he is able
to escape again. That's the only reason they would turn him over," Vigil
said.
Because insiders aided his escape,
rumors circulated for years that he was helped and protected by former
President Felipe Calderon's government, which vanquished some of his top
rivals.
In the bilateral assault on organized
crime and Mexican drug cartels, Sinaloa had not only been relatively
unscathed, but has seen its enemies go down at the hands of the
government.
Aggressive assaults by the Mexican
military and federal police have all but dismantled the leadership of
the Beltran Leyva and Zetas cartels, both huge rivals of Sinaloa, as
well as the La Linea gang fighting Sinaloa for control of the border
city of Ciudad Juarez.
Calderon congratulated
Pena Nieto on the capture Saturday via his Twitter account. Many also
noted the huge boost that capture gave to the credibility of the Pena
Nieto government, whose commitment to fighting organized crime has been
questioned since he took office in late 2012.
But there were rumors circulating for months that a major operation was underway to take down the Sinaloa cartel.
Zambada's
son was arrested in November after entering Arizona, where he had an
appointment with U.S. immigration authorities to arrange legal status
for his wife.
The following month, Zambada's
main lieutenant was killed as Mexican helicopter gunships sprayed
bullets at his mansion in the Gulf of California resort of Puerto
Penasco in a four-hour gunbattle. Days later, police in the Netherlands
arrested a flamboyant top enforcer for Zambada as he arrived in
Amsterdam.
But experts predict that as long as
Guzman's partner, Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada is at large, the cartel will
continue business as usual.
"The take-down of
Joaquin `El Chapo' Guzman Loera is a thorn in the side of the Sinaloa
Cartel, but not a dagger in its heart," said College of William and Mary
government professor George Grayson, who studies Mexico's cartels.
"Zambada ... will step into El Chapo's boots. He is also allied with
Juan Jose `El Azul' Esparragoza Moreno, one of most astute lords in
Mexico's underworld and, by far, its best negotiator."
Rumors
had long circulated that Guzman was hiding everywhere from Argentina
and Guatemala to almost every corner of Mexico, especially its "Golden
Triangle," a mountainous, marijuana-growing region straddling the
northern states of Sinaloa, Durango and Chihuahua.
In
more than a decade on the run, Guzman transformed himself from a
middling Mexican capo into arguably the most powerful drug trafficker in
the world. His fortune has grown to more than $1 billion, according to
Forbes magazine, which listed him among the "World's Most Powerful
People" and ranked him above the presidents of France and Venezuela.
His
Sinaloa Cartel grew bloodier and more powerful, taking over much of the
lucrative trafficking routes along the U.S. border, including such
prized cities as Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez.
Guzman's
play for power against local cartels caused a bloodbath in Tijuana and
made Juarez one of the deadliest cities in the world. In little more
than a year, Mexico's biggest marijuana bust, 134 tons, and its biggest
cultivation were tied to Sinaloa, as were a giant underground
methamphetamine lab in western Mexico and hundreds of tons of precursor
chemicals seized in Mexico and Guatemala.
His
cartel's tentacles now extend as far as Australia thanks to a
sophisticated, international distribution system for cocaine and
methamphetamine.
Guzman did all that with a $7
million bounty on his head and while evading thousands of law
enforcement agents from the U.S. and other countries devoted to his
capture. A U.S. federal indictment unsealed in San Diego in 1995
charges Guzman and 22 members of his organization with conspiracy to
import over eight tons of cocaine and money laundering. A provisional
arrest warrant was issued as a result of the indictment, according to
the U.S. State Department.
He also has been
indicted by federal authorities in the United States several times since
1996. The charges include allegations that he and others conspired to
smuggle "multi-ton quantities" of cocaine into the U.S. and used
violence, including murder, kidnapping and torture to keep the smuggling
operation running.
In 2013, he was named
"Public Enemy No. 1" by the Chicago Crime Commission, only the second
person to get that distinction after U.S. prohibition-era crime boss Al
Capone.
Growing up poor, Guzman was drawn to the money being made by the flow of illegal drugs through his home state of Sinaloa.
He
joined the Guadalajara cartel, run by Mexican Godfather Miguel Angel
Gallardo, and rose quickly through the ranks as a ruthless businessman
and skilled networker.
After Gallardo was arrested in 1989, the gang split, and Guzman took control of Sinaloa's operations.
An
estimated 70,000 people have been killed in drug violence since former
President Calderon deployed thousands of soldiers to drug hotspots upon
taking office on Dec. 1, 2006. The current government of Pena Nieto has
stopped tallying drug-related killings separately.
