Mexican Drug Lord ‘El Chapo’ May Be Coming To Brooklyn, Extradition To U.S. Pending
Accused Mexican drug trafficker Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera could be tried in a Brooklyn federal court. However, this would only be possible if the Mexican government agrees to extradite the notorious drug syndicate leader to the United States.
According to a PIX11 report, the U.S. government is currently negotiating with the Mexican authorities to get El Chapo to the Eastern District of New York for trial.
El Chapo is reportedly facing a number of criminal charges in several U.S. jurisdictions. One of these places is New York’s Eastern District. This is where his underground business is believed to have expanded. The infamous drug syndicate leader is accused of distributing cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, and marijuana into the United States. These drugs usually generate billions of dollars in sales.
It is possible that the accused drug trafficker will be tried in Brooklyn since “it’s the strongest indictment,” according to the PIX11 report.
U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch has been working with the Mexican government to arrange El Chapo’s extradition. The Attorney General unsealed the indictment against El Chapo in 2014. She had served as the United States attorney for New York’s Eastern District, based in Brooklyn.
The 2014 indictment filed in Federal District Court in Brooklyn states that El Chapo helped run the Sinaloa cartel along with Ismael Zambada Garcia. The Sinaloa cartel is one of Mexico’s largest drug syndicates.
The papers also revealed that most of the drugs trafficked by the organization were imported into the United States. This has led the authorities to assume that the Mexican syndicate may have been the major distributor of illegal drugs in New York City.
El Chapo’s drug-trafficking group earned billions of dollars in profits which was laundered back to Mexico, the documents stated. Sinaloa cartel allegedly brought roughly half million kilos of cocaine into the United States between 2002 and 2014. This was made possible through the help and protection of corrupt authorities.
The Brooklyn indictment also makes mention of “sicarios” or hitmen. These men were responsible for numerous drug-related crimes, including murders, assaults, kidnappings, assassinations and acts of torture.
The said indictment orders forfeiture of El Chapo’s properties, “including but not limited to…a sum of $14 billion in United States currency.”
It is still unclear whether the Mexican government will agree to extradite the drug leader to the United States. Mexico was previously against the prospect of letting the U.S government prosecute the notorious El Chapo.
“El Chapo must stay here to complete his sentence and then I will extradite him. So about 300 or 400 years later — it will be a while,” Mexico’s attorney general stated in January 2015.
However, a member of the Justice Department revealed last month that there has been “a different mindset” among Mexican authorities after El Chapo escaped last year.
El Chapo was recaptured on January 8, 2016, after months of being on the run. This was confirmed by by Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto announcing through a tweet. President Nieto’s tweet is translated as follows: “Mission accomplished: We have him. I would like to inform Mexicans that Joaquin Guzmán Loera has been detained.”
Misión cumplida: lo tenemos. Quiero informar a los mexicanos que Joaquín Guzmán Loera ha sido detenido.
— Enrique Peña Nieto (@EPN) January 8, 2016
His secret meeting with actor Sean Penn, Mexican actress Kate del Castillo, and two other filmmakers played a crucial role in his recent arrest. Penn interviewed the fugitive in 2015 in his hometown in Los Mochis, Mexico. This was after El Chapo expressed his desire to film a biopic.
“I supply more heroin, more methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana than anybody else in the world,” El Chapo told Penn in the interview published on Rolling Stone.
A former Rolling Stone editor had some harsh words for Sean Penn’s El Chapo article: https://t.co/FnYBXjy0Gk pic.twitter.com/2wYATtgHap
— Complex Pop Culture (@ComplexPop) January 17, 2016
El Chapo fled prison in July 2015 after he and his cohorts successfully excavated a mile-long tunnel under his prison cell. His controversial escape allegedly involved a number of Mexican jail officials. He first escaped prison in 2001 but was recaptured in 2014.
[Image via YouTube]
