CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico, (Reuters) – Mexico extradited top drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman to New York yesterday, ending a career that included two jail breaks and a leading role in a national drug war, the day before Donald Trump assumes the U.S. presidency.
Guzman, 59, was one of the world’s most wanted drug kingpins until he was captured in January 2016. Six months earlier, he had broken out of a high-security penitentiary in central Mexico through a mile-long tunnel, his second dramatic prison escape.
“The government … today handed Mr Guzman Loera to the U.S. authorities,” the foreign ministry said in a statement, referring to a court decision on Thursday rejecting a legal challenge by his lawyers against extradition.
Guzman is charged in six separate indictments throughout the United States. He faces charges ranging from money laundering to drug trafficking, kidnapping and murder in cities that include Chicago, Miami and New York.
His career began in the opium and cannabis farming hills of the northern state of Sinaloa but he grew to oversee perhaps the world’s largest transnational cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine smuggling organization.
Guzman’s career was violent and his ambition to control more trafficking routes was a key dynamic in Mexico’s decade-long drug war from which his organization emerged mostly victorious.
