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| FILE - In this Feb. 22, 2014 file photo, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman is escorted to a helicopter in handcuffs by Mexican navy marines at a navy hanger in Mexico City. Mexico's security commission says top drug lord Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman has escaped from a maximum security prison for the second time. |
MEXICO CITY
(AP) -- Mexico mounted an all-out manhunt Sunday for its most powerful
drug lord, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, who escaped from a maximum
security prison through a 1.5-kilometer (1 mile) tunnel from a small
opening in the shower area of his cell, according to the country's top
security official.
The elaborate underground
escape route, built allegedly without the detection of authorities,
allowed Guzman to do what Mexican officials promised would never happen
after his re-capture last year - slip out of one of the country's most
secure penitentiaries for the second time.
"This
represents without a doubt an affront to the Mexican state," said
President Enrique Pena Nieto, speaking during a previously scheduled
trip to France. "But I also have confidence in the institutions of the
Mexican state ... that they have the strength and determination to
recapture this criminal."
If Guzman is not
caught immediately, the drug lord will likely be back in full command
and control of the Sinaloa Cartel in 48 hours, said Michael S. Vigil, a
retired U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration chief of international
operations.
"We may never find him again," he
said. "All the accolades that Mexico has received in their counterdrug
efforts will be erased by this one event."
Thirty
employees from various part of the Altiplano prison, 55 miles (90
kilometers) west of Mexico City, have been taken in for questioning,
according to the federal Attorney General's Office.
A
manhunt began immediately late Saturday for Guzman, whose cartel is
believed to control most of the major crossing points for drugs at the
U.S. border with Mexico.
Guatemala's Interior
Ministry said a special task force of police and soldiers were watching
Mexico's southern border for any sign of fugitive drug lord.
To
the north, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch issued a statement
offering "any assistance that may help support his swift recapture,"
Associated
Press journalists near Altiplano saw the roads were being heavily
patrolled by federal police, with numerous checkpoints and a Blackhawk
helicopter flying overhead. Flights were also suspended at Toluca's
international airport near the penitentiary in the State of Mexico, and
civil aviation hangars were being searched.
Guzman
was last seen about 9 p.m. in the shower area of his cell, according to
a statement from the National Security Commission. After a time, he was
lost by the prison's security camera surveillance network. Upon
checking his cell, authorities found it empty and a 20-by-20-inch
(50-by-50 centimeter) hole near the shower.
Guzman's
escape is a major embarrassment to the Pena Nieto administration, which
had received plaudits for its aggressive approach to top drug lords.
Since the government took office in late 2012, Mexican authorities have
nabbed or killed six of them, including Guzman.
Guzman
faces multiple federal drug trafficking indictments in the U.S. as well
as Mexico, and was on the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's
most-wanted list.
After Guzman was arrested on
Feb. 22, 2014, the U.S. said it would file an extradition request,
though it's not clear if that happened.
The
Mexican government at the time vehemently denied the need to extradite
Guzman, even as many expressed fears he would escape as he did in 2001
while serving a 20-year sentence in the country's other top-security
prison, Puente Grande, in the western state of Jalisco.
Former
Mexican Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam told the AP earlier this
year that the U.S. would get Guzman in "about 300 or 400 years" after he
served time for all his crimes in Mexico.
He dismissed concerns that Guzman could escape a second time. That risk "does not exist," Murillo Karam said.
"It
wasn't overconfidence; it was Mexican judicial nationalism," said Raul
Benitez, a security expert at Mexico's National Autonomous University.
"First he had to pay his debt in Mexico and then in the U.S. Now it's
very evident that it was a mistake."
It was
difficult to believe that such an elaborate structure could have been
built without the detection of authorities, though photographs show the
corrections facility surrounded by construction, with large open ditches
and lots of metal drainage pipes that could have camouflaged such a
project.
Guzman dropped by ladder into a hole
10 meters (30 feet) deep that connected with a tunnel about 1.7 meters
(5 feet-6 inches) high that was fully ventilated and had lighting,
Rubido said.
Authorities also found tools,
oxygen tanks and a motorcycle adapted to run on rails that they believe
was used to carry dirt out and tools in during the construction.
The
tunnel terminated in a half-built house in a farm field, according to
radio transmissions among authorities, who cordoned off the structure
that sits atop a small rise with a clear view of the prison. They would
not confirm the location of the end of the tunnel directly to the AP.
A
74-year-old rancher whose home is about 400 yards (meters) from the
cordoned property said he had seen a couple in their 30s start building
on the property about a year ago. He did not want to be named for safety
reasons. He said they were very friendly and not from the area.
"One
day my cows made it over to the house and I didn't see anything
strange," said the rancher, whose home sits between the prison and the
other property.
Guzman's cartel is known for
building elaborate tunnels beneath the Mexico-U.S. border to transport
cocaine, methamphetamines and marijuana, with ventilation, lighting and
even railcars to easily move products.
He was
first caught by authorities in Guatemala in 1993, extradited and
sentenced to 20 years in prison on drug-trafficking-related charges.
Many
accounts say he escaped in 2001 in a laundry cart, although there have
been several versions of how he got away. What is clear is that he had
help from prison guards, who were prosecuted and convicted.
Guzman was finally re-captured in February 2014 after eluding authorities for days across his home state of Sinaloa.
Born
58 years ago, according to Interpol, he and allies took control of the
Sinaloa faction when a larger syndicate began to fall apart in 1989.
During
his first stint as a fugitive, Guzman transformed himself into arguably
the most powerful drug trafficker in the world. His fortune was
estimated at more than $1 billion, according to Forbes magazine, which
listed him among the "World's Most Powerful People," ranked above the
presidents of France and Venezuela.
He finally
was tracked down to a modest beachside high-rise in the Pacific Coast
resort city of Mazatlan, where he had been hiding with his wife and twin
daughters. He was captured in the early morning of Feb. 22, 2014,
without a shot fired.
Before they reached him,
security forces went on a several-day chase through Culiacan, the
capital of Sinaloa state. They found houses where Guzman supposedly had
been staying with steel-enforced doors and the same kind of lighted,
ventilated escape tunnels.
Even after his 2014
capture, Guzman's Sinaloa Cartel empire continues to stretch throughout
North America and reaches as far as Europe and Australia. The cartel
has been heavily involved in the bloody drug war that has torn through
parts of Mexico for the last decade, taking an estimated 100,000 lives
or more.
Altiplano, considered the most secure
of Mexico's federal prisons, also houses Zetas drug cartel leader
Miguel Angel Trevino, and Edgar Valdes Villarreal, known as "La Barbie,"
of the Beltran Leyva cartel.
