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Emma Coronel Aispuro, the wife of the Mexican drug lord "El Chapo" in February 2019
Photo: Jeenah Moon / REUTERS
The wife of former Mexican drug lord Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán has pleaded guilty to a US court for having been involved in her husband's drug empire.
The US and Latin American media reported unanimously on Thursday from a courtroom in the US capital Washington.
Emma Coronel has been tried in federal court for helping her husband's Sinaloa cartel smuggle the drugs cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and marijuana into the United States.
The verdict is expected in September.
The 31-year-old faces life imprisonment.
The 31-year-old was arrested at Washington International Airport on February 22 and has been in custody ever since.
Coronel is a US citizen and a Mexican citizen.
She was also charged with helping Guzmán escape from a Mexican prison in 2015 and later planning another prison escape before Guzmán was extradited to the United States in January 2017.
Life imprisonment for Guzmán
"El Chapo", leader of the powerful Sinaloa cartel in Mexico for 25 years, is sitting in a maximum security prison in the US state of Colorado.
A court in New York had sentenced him to life imprisonment plus 30 years in July 2019 - Coronel was among the spectators in the courtroom at the time.
A jury found Guzmán, now 64, guilty of all ten counts in one of the largest drug trials in American history - including involvement in a criminal organization, the manufacture and international distribution of cocaine and heroin, as well as money laundering and the use of firearms.
mjm / dpa