El Chapo from prison: "I receive cruel and unfair treatment"

File photo of Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán arriving at MacArthur Airport in Ronkonkoma, New York, after being extradited from Mexico, on January 19, 2017. DEA (AP)

Joaquín

Guzmán sent an affidavit in September of last year, written in the first person, to a US court that has published the letter these days, according to the

In the letter, the one who was the most powerful drug trafficker in the world, according to the United States justice, sentenced to life imprisonment in 2019 in that country, denounces the "cruel and unfair" treatment he has received for five years, who was extradited from Mexico.

He describes how he has been affected by the conditions of extreme isolation to which he is subjected, under the same conditions that apply to terrorists.

“I have suffered a lot,” he says.

The capo, who was arrested in Mexico in January 2016, after two spectacular prison breaks in Mexico.

The last one, from the Altiplano prison, conceived as maximum security, in July 2015. The Hollywoodesque escape through a tunnel with ventilation, lighting, oxygen tanks and rails for a motorcycle, connected to his cell, caused a crisis in the government of then President Enrique Peña Nieto.

The last capture of him ended the story of him.

In 2017 he was extradited to the United States and sentenced to life in prison for drug trafficking crimes two years ago by a court in Brooklyn, New York.

Since then, through his lawyers, he has insisted on the "inhumane" treatment received by the US prison system.

But the statement sent to the federal court in Denver (Colorado), where the prison to which he was transferred is located and where he is serving his sentence, is the first document signed in the first person in which he denounces the situation in which he lives. .

El Chapo is in the Florence prison (Colorado), in Unit H, under the SAMs (Special, Administrative and Extreme Isolation Measures) scheme.

In that area there are characters of the stature of Theodore John Kaczynski, better known as the

the scientist-terrorist who sent bomb letters;

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of those responsible for the Boston Marathon bombing in April 2013;

Al Qaeda-trained Richard Reid, who tried to detonate a shoe bomb on a flight from Paris to Miami in 2001;

and one of the organizers of the attack on the Twin Towers in 1993, Ramzi Yousef.

"I am a 64-year-old Mexican and I was extradited from Mexico to the United States in January 2017," begins the seven-page document, in English, which the capo signed as "Joaquín Guzmán L", as published by the chain.

"Because of the treatment at ADMAX [the name of the Florence prison] now I suffer from headaches, memory loss, muscle cramps, stress and depression," says El Chapo.

“The treatment I receive is cruel and unfair, and it is causing me to suffer from psychological and health problems.

I pray that this court intervenes, ”he mentions, referring to the Denver federal court that received the lawsuit in October 2021 and that is due to rule in the coming weeks.

In a cell three meters long by two meters wide, he lives with no human contact other than that of the guards who handcuff his hands and feet to get out.

According to his lawyer, Mariel Colón Miró, he has the right to breathe fresh air 10 hours a week.

But since December 2019 this time has been reduced to three hours.

He also cannot have contact with other inmates and phone calls are restricted to two 15-minute calls a month, with two of his daughters, a sister and her mother.

The letters he sends take 10 months to deliver, due to revisions.

His wife, Emma Coronel, and mother of the two twins, is serving a three-year prison sentence in a minimum security prison in Texas for having helped the capo in his operations.

Her release is scheduled for September 13, 2023. The five visits per month allowed are with her defender, Colón mentioned in an interview for the same network.

El Chapo narrates an incident that happened in July 2021, when he was coughing “uncontrollably” and his chest was congested.

“I never received medical treatment,” he noted, although he did receive visits from doctors.

He also denounces that on another occasion, a toe became infected with a fungus, since he shares the same nail clippers as other inmates, and he did not receive medical help.

"The fungus left when the nail fell off," Colón said in the interview.

"Medical care in ADMAX is scarce," said the drug trafficker, although he acknowledged that he has already been vaccinated against the coronavirus and that he has been treated several times for blood pressure.

“I have suffered a lot being in solitary confinement.

My blood pressure has risen, leading to headaches and anxiety.

Sometimes I forget things,” she stated in the letter.

"They serve me little food and I often leave hungry."

El Chapo also claimed to have a sleep disorder because he is woken up after midnight by the "extremely hot" air that comes out of the ventilation for fifteen minutes, between four and five times.

“Every night this causes my heart to start beating rapidly, raising my blood pressure.

I have raised this issue with the staff, but no one has done anything,” he added.

The trial against El Chapo Guzmán, one of the most mediatic and longest in the history of justice in the United States, was a heavy blow by the US justice system against the Mexican drug cartels.

Something that the Anti-Drug Agency (DEA) scored, but that has not prevented the expansion not only of the cartel led by El Chapo, that of Sinaloa, but also the multiplication and growth of others, such as the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel, with tentacles in the whole country.

Guzmán's sons, nicknamed Los Chapitos, took over from their father and with violent and sadistic strategies have spread terror in the power vacuum left by the great capo.

The DEA offers a reward of about 5 million dollars for their heads, Jesús Alfredo, Iván Archivaldo, Ovidio and Joaquín.

They are accused of having increased their power in the trafficking of fentanyl, cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin.

And the crisis of deaths from opiates in the United States reached historical records after the capture of the drug trafficker.

The country recorded more than 108,000 deaths last year.

In Mexico, the extreme violence of the drug cartels claims more than 100 murders a day.

subscribe here

to the

of EL PAÍS México and receive all the informative keys of the current affairs of this country