Mexico Extradites Drug Lord El Chapo To The US, Hours To Trump’s Inauguration

[caption id="attachment_15772" align="alignnone" width="699"]Joaquín Guzmán Loera A.K.A El Chapo[/caption]

Mexican government has extradited one of the world’s most notorious drug lords, Joaquín Guzmán Loera, popularly known as “El Chapo” to the United States.

“El Chapo”, who heads the Sinaloa cartel, which is accused of generating much of the deadly violence in Mexico’s decades-long drug war and providing tons of narcotics to the United States, was extradited on Thursday night, on the eve of Donald Trump’s inauguration.

He landed at MacArthur Airport on Long Island, outside a New York jail, and was escorted by heavily armed US Marshalls, the US Justice Department said.

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Guzman is charged in six separate indictments throughout the United States, one of which is in New York.

US prosecutors said Brooklyn federal attorney Robert Capers will hold a news conference at 10:00 am (1500 GMT) — less than two hours before Trump’s inauguration — to announce his extradition and arraignment.

Mr. Guzmán’s extradition came suddenly, after nearly a year of appeal and legal procedures. A federal court in Mexico denied an appeal by his lawyers to block the extradition, clearing the way for his transfer to the United States.

The Mexican government, had earlier claimed that “El Chapo” would serve his long sentence in Mexico but after his latest escape in 2015, the officials began reconsidering their stance.

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When he was recaptured early last year, after one of Mexico’s most exhaustive manhunts, the government publicly said it would allow his extradition.

Mr. Guzmán first managed to break out of a prison in 2001, according to some accounts, by hiding in a laundry cart. In the ensuing years, while on the run, he seemed always just out of the grasp of the authorities, slipping into secret passages beneath bathtubs or absconding seconds before federal raids.

El Chapo was a major trophy for law enforcement officials in both the US and Mexico. Over the years, as the drug trade blossomed into a multibillion-dollar industry, he became much more than a mere trafficker.

As a farm-boy-turned-billionaire with a flair for the dramatic, he became a symbol of Mexico’s broken rule of law, America’s narcotics obsession and the failure of both nations’ drug wars.

His feats turned him into a legend of Mexico’s underworld, with musicians singing his praises in folk ballads known as “narcocorridos” — tributes to drug capos.

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