Drug lord ‘El Chapo’ extradited to the U.S.

Mexico’s most notorious drug kingpin, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, who gained fame for his daring prison escapes and an interview with Hollywood stars while a fugitive, was extradited Thursday to the United States to face trafficking and other charges, Mexican and U.S. authorities said.

The long-awaited extradition of the leader of the powerful Sinaloa cartel came on President Obama’s last full day in office and the eve of President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration.

The timing, after months of unsuccessful appeals by Guzman’s legal team to block the move, caused considerable speculation on social media and elsewhere. The move appeared to give a legal triumph to the outgoing Obama administration on its final day in office.

“They decided not to give Trump an early victory with the extradition of El Chapo,” Alejandro Hope, a security analyst, said on Twitter.

Many analysts had concluded that Guzman’s extradition was inevitable but that various legal appeals would drag the process well into 2017. Last year, Mexican authorities predicted that the extradition would probably take place in February of this year.

Mexico’s Foreign Ministry confirmed the extradition after various news reports that Guzman had been moved from his prison in the border city of Ciudad Juarez amid high security to the international airport outside Juarez.

The U.S. Department of Justice also confirmed Guzman’s extradition, saying in a news release that the infamous trafficker “is en route to the United States to face criminal charges in connection with his leadership of the Mexican organized crime syndicate known as the ‘Sinaloa Cartel.’”

U.S. authorities thanked their Mexican counterparts but gave no further word on Guzman’s likely destination in the United States. Brooklyn has long been seen as the likely destination for Guzman, and federal prosecutors there last year revised an indictment to drop charges that would make the accused drug lord eligible for the death penalty, which had been a sticking point in negotiations between the U.S. and Mexico.

The Associated Press, citing a senior U.S. official, said that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration took custody of Guzman in Ciudad Juarez, which is across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, and that a plane carrying him departed for New York at 5:31 p.m. EST.

Guzman has drug trafficking, murder, money laundering and other charges pending against him in federal courts in a number of states, including California, Texas, Illinois and New York.

He was moved to a prison in Ciudad Juarez last year after his capture following a sensational escape from a high-security prison complex outside Mexico City. That escaped involved the construction of a mile-long tunnel leading to his cell.

In extraditing the convicted kingpin to the United States, Mexico has washed its hands of its most high-profile inmate, a folk hero to some and a persistent source of headaches for government officials.

Keeping Guzman behind bars was a priority for the government of President Enrique Peña Nieto, who suffered a serious humiliation in July 2015 when Guzman broke out of Altiplano prison near Mexico City via an underground tunnel. Guzman was captured last January, but not before he granted a secret interview to actors Sean Penn and Kate del Castillo, another embarrassment for Peña Nieto.

That was Guzman’s second daring escape.

In 2001, he broke out from another high-security Mexican prison by hiding in a load of laundry, most likely with help from bribed prison staff.

During his first term on the lam, Guzman helped turn the Sinaloa cartel into one of the world’s most powerful drug trafficking organizations.

Last year, a Mexican judge granted approval to extradition petitions from federal prosecutors in San Diego and southern Texas.

In California, Guzman faces charges of conspiracy to import and possess cocaine for the purpose of distribution. In Texas, he faces various charges including criminal conspiracy, crimes against public health, organized crime, firearms violations, murder and money laundering.

Guzman’s attorneys filed unsuccessful appeals to keep him from being tried in the U.S., a country with a much stronger justice system than Mexico.

Still, Guzman may welcome the conditions of a new prison system. Over the last year, the inmate complained that he was subjected to “psychological torture” while being held in a prison outside Juarez.

“Everything has become hell,” Guzman told a doctor in a report made public last year. Guzman, whose cartel is responsible for countless deaths and other brutalities, said the psychological conditions in the prison were worse than any physical violence.

“They have not beaten me, but I would prefer that,” he said, describing a prison cell where the lights were kept on 24 hours a day and his only human contact was with masked guards.

“They do not let me sleep,” Guzman said.

National Security Commissioner Renato Sales Heredia disputed that in an interview with a radio journalist last year.

“The truth is he has not been subjected to torture, of course, or any degrading or inhuman treatment,” he said.

McDonnell and Linthicum reported from Mexico City and Wilber from Washington. Cecilia Sanchez of The Times’ Mexico City bureau and Times staff writer Tracy Wilkinson in Washington contributed to this report.

ALSO

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‘El Chapo’ says he’s depressed by prison life, complains of ‘psychological torture’

Murder, torture, drugs: Cartel kingpin’s wife says that’s not the ‘El Chapo’ she knows

UPDATES:

4:40p.m.: This article has been updated with background information and political analysis.

3:55 p.m.: This article has been updated with staff reporting.

It was first published at 2:58 p.m.