He was shirtless and had a small black moustache, and bore a resemblance to
the last known image of Guzmán. Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto later
confirmed the arrest on his Twitter account.
It emerged that the Mexican Navy raided the home of Guzman’s ex-wife, Griselda
Lopez, earlier this week in Culiacan, the largest city in Sinaloa. They
found a cache of weapons and Guzman was believed to have narrowly escaped
down a tunnel leading to the sewers. A series of other homes were then
raided.
Michael S Vigil, a former DEA official briefed on the operation, said:”It
became like a nuclear explosion where the mushroom started to expand
throughout the city of Culiacan.
“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
Culiacan and Mazatlan. That was a fatal error.” Guzman was arrested
with a small number of bodyguards.
A US security official said: “We’ve been actively tracking him for five
weeks. Because of that pressure he fled in the last couple of days to
Mazatlan. He had a small contingent with him.”
His arrest is a major success for President Enrique Pena Nieto and follows the
capture of Miguel Angel Trevino, head of the ultra-violent Zetas cartel, in
July.
Guzmán, 56, whose nickname means “Shorty” and refers to his 5ft 6ins stature,
heads the Sinaloa cartel, named after the northwestern state of the same
name.
He has a fortune estimated at more than $1 billion by Forbes magazine, which
has listed him at number 67 among the “World’s Most Powerful People”, above
the presidents of France and Venezuela.
The tentacles of his cartel extend across North, Central, and South America
and to Europe and Australia.
One former US official said: “There’s no drug trafficking organisation in
Mexico with the scope, the savvy, the operational ability, expertise and
knowledge of the Sinaloa cartel. You’ve kind of lined yourself up the New
York Yankees of the drug trafficking world.”
Guzmán’s life story has become folklore in Mexico. Born into poverty in the
small town of Badiraguato in Sinaloa he initially survived by selling
oranges.
As a young man his bloody ascent to power began with the Guadalajara cartel in
the 1980s. After the leader was arrested in 1989 the boyish-looking Guzmán
took over operations in Sinaloa, ruthlessly rising through the ranks, using
local politicians to help control trafficking routes, and building
sophisticated drug tunnels into the US through Arizona.
In 1993 gunmen from a rival cartel tried to assassinate him in a car park at
Guadalajara airport but mistakenly targeted the vehicle of a Roman Catholic
Cardinal, Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo, who was shot and killed in a crime that
outraged Mexico. Days later Guzmán was captured in Guatemala, returned, and
jailed for 20 years.
But in 2001 he escaped from Puente Grande prison in Guadalajara by being
smuggled out in a laundry basket, an operation which was alleged to have
involved two dozen guards.
The escape elevated Guzmán to near mythical status among Mexico’s drug barons
and his infamy surpassed even that of Colombia’s Pablo Escobar, who had been
killed in 1993 following a decade long reign of terror.
Omar Meza, a well-known singer from Sinaloa, said: “A lot of people here
see Guzmán as a success story because he is a poor guy who has been able to
beat the system and become richer than you could ever imagine. They refer to
him as a valiente (a brave one).”
Guzmán went on to break a non-aggression pact reached by the top Mexican
cartels, seizing control of smuggling routes and leading to bloodbaths in
Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez, which became known as the murder capital of the
world.
Mexico’s biggest cannabis seizure, 134 tons of the drug, and a giant
underground methamphetamine production facility were linked to the Sinaloa
cartel.
But as rivals from groups including the Arellano Felix and Beltran Leyva
cartels were arrested during a government war on drugs Guzmán only grew
stronger.
The brutality of the drug war saw his henchmen carrying out bloody crimes,
most recently as they fought their with major rival, the Zetas, with
mutilated bodies dumped in the streets. In a shopping centre in the holiday
resort of Acapulco the beheaded bodies of 14 men were found with notes from
the killers signed “El Chapo’s People”.
Guzmán sent squads of assassins with names such as “The Black Ones”
and “The Ghosts” to wipe out rivals. They once left a note with
some corpses reading: “Don’t forget that I am your real daddy. El Chapo”.
As he flooded US cities with drugs his drug smuggling innovations included
once putting seven tons of cocaine in cans of chili peppers.
In Chicago he was named as “Public Enemy Number One” and officials
said his influence had been more malign than Al Capone. Last year the
Chicago Crime Commission said Guzman “easily surpassed the carnage and
social destruction that was caused by Capone”.
Nearly 80,000 people have been killed in the drug violence since former
President Felipe Calderon deployed thousands of soldiers in 2006.
The bounty on Guzmán’s head ultimately rose to $7 million but he evaded
Mexican authorities and thousands of agents from the US and other countries
who were assigned to capturing him and breaking up the Sinaloa cartel.
In Sinaloa he used his wealth to buy the silence of local people, cultivating
what has been described as a “Robin Hood” outlaw image which discouraged
people from turning him in as he hid in the “Golden Triangle,” a
mountainous, cannabis-growing region.
In a local song called “The ballad of a short man” Guzmán’s flight from the
law was celebrated. It went: “He escaped from hell. And crossed himself in
church.
Sleeping sometimes in homes. Sometimes in tents. Radios and rifles. At the
foot of the bed.”
But for years there had been speculation that the net was closing on Guzmán.
His arrest followed the capture of several top Sinaloa operatives in the
last few months. in December one of his lieutenants was killed when Mexican
helicopter gunships fired at his mansion.
There had also been a series of close misses by security forces. In 2007
Guzmán held a public wedding to his new 18-year-old beauty queen wife that
was said to have been attended by corrupt local police and officials.
Mexican federal police arrived at the location the next day but Guzmán was
gone.
In 2011 his young wife, Emma Coronel, a US citizen, went to Los Angeles and
gave birth to twins. The following year Guzman’s pregnant daughter was
arrested in San Diego after also going to the US to give birth.
The following year Guzmán was believed to have been staying in a million
dollar beach side mansion in Los Cabos, a favourite holiday destination for
Hollywood stars and wealthy American tourists, shortly before police got
there.
A day earlier US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had been at a meeting with
foreign ministers in the same resort.
In 2012, Colombian police seized 116 properties worth $15 million they said
were bought for Guzmán, Before his arrest he was rumoured to have been
moving frequently between up to 15 locations, including in Argentina and
Guatemala, with a personal bodyguard that sometimes rose to 300 men.
Source Article from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/centralamericaandthecaribbean/mexico/10655962/Captured-Joaquin-El-Chapo-Guzman-Mexicos-No-1-drug-lord.html