Mexico on hunt for drug lord after escape from high-security prison
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IN a scheme befitting a caper novel, Mexico’s most powerful drug lord, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, escaped from a maximum security prison through a 1.5-kilometer tunnel that opened into the shower area of his cell, the country’s top security official said yesterday.
The elaborate, ventilated escape hatch 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 the country’s most secure penitentiary for the second time.
Eighteen employees from various part of the Altiplano prison 90 kilometers west of Mexico City have been taken in for questioning, Security Commissioner Monte Alejandro Rubido told a news conference without answering questions.
A manhunt for the head of the powerful Sinaloa Cartel, which has an international reach and is believed to control most of the major crossing points for drugs at the United States border with Mexico, was launched late on Saturday.
Roads near the Altiplano were being heavily patrolled by Federal Police with numerous checkpoints and a Blackhawk helicopter flying overhead.
Flights were also suspended at Toluca airport near the penitentiary in the state of Mexico, and civil aviation hangars were being searched.
Guzman was last seen about 9pm on Saturday in the shower area of his cell, according to a statement from the National Security Commission issued early yesterday.
After a time, he was lost by the prison’s security camera surveillance network. Upon checking his cell, authorities found it empty and a 50-by-50 centimeter hole near the shower.
Guzman’s escape is a major embarrassment to the administration of President Enrique Pena Nieto, 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.
Most wanted
Guzman faces multiple federal drug trafficking indictments in the US as well as Mexico, and was on the US Drug Enforcement Administration’s most wanted list.
After Guzman was arrested in February last year, the US 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 another maximum-security prison, Puente Grande, in the western state of Jalisco.
Former Mexican Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam said earlier this year that the US would get Guzman in “about 300 or 400 years” after he served time for all his crimes in Mexico. Murillo Karam said sending Guzman to the US would save Mexico a lot of money, but keeping him was a question of national sovereignty.
He dismissed concerns that Guzman could escape a second time. That risk “does not exist,” Murillo Karam said.
It was difficult to believe that such an elaborate structure could have been built without the detection of authorities. According to Rubido, the tunnel terminated in a house under construction in a neighborhood near the prison.
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