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Emma Coronel Aispuro (2019): "I'm not sure if she can ever return home"
Photo: KENA BETANCUR / AFP
Emma Coronel Aispuro, the wife of the imprisoned Mexican drug lord Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, has been sentenced to three years in prison in the USA.
She was involved in the activities of the Sinaloa cartel, which her husband used to run.
The 32-year-old pleaded guilty to three counts during the Washington trial.
According to this, she had been selling drugs, laundering money and doing financial deals with the Sinaloa cartel.
She had asked the judge's forgiveness in Spanish.
Coronel - who has both US and Mexican citizenship - also confessed to serving as a courier between Guzmán and other members of the Sinaloa cartel while he was held in Mexico's Altiplano prison after his 2014 arrest.
Guzmán used this communication to plan his 2015 prison escape through a cartel-built underground tunnel that led to the shower in his cell.
The drug lord was caught again in January 2016 and extradited to the United States a year later.
The prosecution had demanded four years in prison for Coronel before the verdict.
Her attorney had pleaded for mercy, pointing out that Coronel had been thrust into the world of drug trafficking at a young age.
“She met Joaquín Guzmán when she was a minor.
She was 17 years old and married him on her 18th birthday, ”the lawyer said.
He added that she was now in danger as anonymous law enforcement sources told media that she was working with the government.
"I'm not sure she can ever return home," he said.
"El Chapo" in life imprisonment
"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 then among the spectators in the courtroom.
A jury found Guzmán, now 63, guilty of all ten charges 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.
ptz / Reuters
