Shortly before 9 p.m. on Saturday, Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the Mexican drug kingpin whose capture last year
had been trumpeted by his country’s government as a crucial victory in
its bloody campaign against the narcotics trade, stepped into the shower
in his cell in the most secure wing of the most secure prison in Mexico.
He never came out.
When
guards later entered the cell, they discovered a 2-by-2-foot hole,
through which Mr. Guzmán, known as El Chapo, or Shorty, had disappeared.
The
prison break humiliated the government of President Enrique Peña Nieto,
which had proclaimed the arrest of Mr. Guzmán and leaders of other drug
cartels as crucial achievements in restoring order and sovereignty to a
country long beleaguered by the horrific violence associated with
organized crime.
The opening in the shower led to a mile-long tunnel
leading to a construction site in the nearby neighborhood of Santa
Juanita in Almoloya de Juárez, west of Mexico City. The tunnel was more
than two feet wide and more than five feet high, tall enough for him to
walk standing upright, and was burrowed more than 30 feet underground.
It had been equipped with lighting, ventilation and a motorcycle on
rails that was probably used to transport digging material and cart the
dirt out.
A
few days after Mr. Guzmán’s arrest in February of last year, Mr. Peña
Nieto told the Univision television network that he would be asking his
interior minister every day if Mr. Guzmán, who had broken out of a Mexican prison once before,
in 2001, was being well guarded. “It’s the government’s responsibility
to ensure that the escape that occurred a few years ago is never, ever
repeated,” Mr. Peña Nieto said.
A
video camera watched over the notorious prisoner’s cell, but apparently
did not record how Mr. Guzmán was able to tunnel out undetected.
In
the hours after the breakout, the government began a sweeping manhunt,
calling states of emergency in the surrounding areas and shutting down
the airport in the nearby city of Toluca. The police and military
personnel, many wearing body armor and carrying automatic weapons,
stopped vehicles near the prison, Altiplano, which is about 55 miles
west of Mexico City, and tightened security along the borders of Mexico
State, where the prison is. The authorities also held 30 prison
employees for questioning.
Officials said the tunnel ended about a mile from Mr.
Guzmán's cell, at a construction site southwest of the prison.
U
Though
this was perhaps Mexico’s most spectacular prison escape since the
previous one by Mr. Guzmán, the country has seen many breakouts, which
have often occurred with the collusion of the authorities.
Mr.
Peña Nieto, on a state visit to France, issued a statement on Sunday
afternoon saying that the escape “represents without a doubt an affront
to the Mexican state.” Though he said he would remain in France to
finish the visit, he dispatched his interior minister to personally
oversee the operation to recapture Mr. Guzmán.
Experts
on the drug underworld were left dumbfounded and predicted the escape
could bolster American demands to extradite top crime figures,
particularly when United States law enforcement personnel have played
major roles in many cases, and not without personal risk.
“It’s
shocking, embarrassing, a huge blow, almost everything under the sun,”
said Eric L. Olson, a scholar at the Mexico Institute of the Wilson
Center who follows crime trends in Latin America. “It is almost Mexico’s
worst nightmare, and I suspect many in U.S. law enforcement are
apoplectic right now.”
“Mexico is going to be under increasing pressure from the U.S. in terms of extraditing these top people,” he said.
Mexico
has long struggled to reshape its police forces and root out
corruption, but Mr. Olson said the prison system often takes a back seat
as “the last thing in the chain of law enforcement.”
Mr.
Peña Nieto told Univision last year that if Mr. Guzmán were to escape
again, “it would be more than unfortunate, it would be unforgivable.”
That
was the sentiment among analysts and ordinary people alike in Mexico on
Sunday, as they struggled to grasp how a kingpin already known for
burrowing tunnels was able to do so under what was supposed to be an
impregnable prison. For many, it displayed the challenge of applying
justice against overwhelming narcotics wealth.
“Chapo’s
escape is spectacular as a blatant example of the corruption and
complicity inside the prison system,” said Eduardo Guerrero, a security
analyst in Mexico. “The people who worked on the construction of the
tunnel took their time to do it, calmly, with no worries, apparently.
They equipped it perfectly, with everything necessary for a secure
escape.”
In
addition to pioneering the use of tunnels to smuggle drugs across, or
rather under, the United States border, Mr. Guzmán built a warren of
them in Culiacán, the capital of the state of Sinaloa, where his cartel
was based and where he was believed to have been hiding for years.
Days
before his capture last year, Mexican marines and American law
enforcement officers raided the home of his ex-wife in Culiacán, only to
find that he had fled though a secret door beneath a bathtub that led
to a network of tunnels and sewer canals connecting to six other houses.
Mr. Guzmán was finally caught in an apartment he used in the Pacific seaside city of Mazatlán.
Before
his arrest, Mr. Guzmán presided over a vast network that smuggled
cocaine and marijuana into the United States and stretched as far as
Europe and Africa. His wealth was estimated by Forbes magazine at more
than $1 billion.
Mr.
Guzmán, who is believed to be in his late 50s, began his criminal
career by selling marijuana with his father in the mountains of Sinaloa,
never studying past third grade. In the years after his escape from
prison in 2001, he became a mythical figure, surrounded by urban legends
of sightings. Security agents closed in on him a couple of times, only
to find that he had slipped away just hours before, often through
tunnels built into the homes he frequented.
He
faces indictments in at least seven American federal courts on charges
that include narcotics trafficking and murder. In October, a new
indictment in Federal District Court in Brooklyn linked him and his
associates to hundreds of acts of murder, assault, kidnapping and
torture.
In
January, however, Mexico’s attorney general, Jesús Murillo Karam, told
The Associated Press that Mr. Guzmán would never serve time in the
United States. “I could accept extradition, but at the time that I
choose. El Chapo must stay here to complete his sentence, and then I
will extradite him,” Mr. Murillo Karam said then. “So about 300 or 400
years later — it will be a while.”
The
United States never filed a formal extradition request, though American
officials did discuss it with their Mexican counterparts, who made it
clear that they would not readily give him up, American law enforcement
officials said not long after Mr. Guzmán’s arrest.
In
a statement on Sunday, Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch said, “We
share the government of Mexico’s concern regarding the escape of Joaquín
Guzmán Loera ‘Chapo’ from a Mexican prison.”
“The
U.S. government stands ready to work with our Mexican partners to
provide any assistance that may help support his swift recapture,” the
statement added.
The
rule of law has long been a challenge for Mexico, and Mr. Guzmán’s case
was but the most recent example. While Mr. Peña Nieto has tried to move
away from the law and order concerns of his predecessor, Felipe
Calderón, pressing significant economic reforms engineered to position
Mexico as a success story, violence connected to the drug trade, and the
impunity that accompanies it, has dogged his administration.
There
was perhaps no more striking example than the deaths of 43 university
students in the restive southern state of Guerrero. A mayor, his wife
and more than 45 police officers have been arrested in connection with
the killings, accused of working on behalf — or being members of — the
gangs that control the region.
Elisabeth Malkin and Paulina Villegas contributed reporting.
Culled from New York Times
Culled from New York Times
No comments:
Post a Comment