Joaquín 'el Chapo' Guzmán, during his transfer to the United States to be imprisoned, on January 19, 2017.PGR
Joaquín
El Chapo
Guzmán, one of the most famous drug traffickers in history, continues to make people talk.
Imprisoned for life in a maximum security prison in Colorado, United States, El Chapo protests the cruel treatment he receives from the authorities.
In a letter that his lawyer, José Refugio Rodríguez, sent a week ago to the Mexican ambassador to the US, Esteban Moctezuma, the drug trafficker also denounced alleged illegalities in the extradition process that ended with his bones north of the Rio Grande, already more than five years.
But above all it is a protest letter, a cry of complaint for the conditions in which he lives.
“I have not seen the light of the sun,” says El Chapo, as explained by the lawyer on the radio program of journalist Ciro Gómez Leyva.
El Chapo's letters are about to become a curious variant of the epistolary genre.
In September 2021, the drug trafficker submitted an affidavit before a US court to complain about the same thing: cruel treatment, solitary confinement, little attention to his medical problems... Released months later, the letter said: “I have suffered a lot.
Due to the treatment in ADMAX (the name of the prison where he is serving time) I now suffer from headaches, memory loss, muscle cramps, stress and depression”.
In the first or third person, as is the case this time, the former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel calls the Mexican government to account.
Not this one, led by Andrés Manuel López Obrador, but the previous one, chaired by Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018), of the PRI.
Arrested in 2016 after two spectacular prison escapes, the last one with Peña Nieto at the command of the Executive, the Government quickly flew El Chapo to the US, disregarding, according to lawyer Rodríguez, the extradition law.
“What he specifically asks López Obrador to pay attention to the violation of rights incurred by the Peña Nieto government and, specifically, [Luis] Videgaray, then Secretary of Foreign Relations, by handing him over in flagrant violation of his guarantee hearing so that he could be tried in New York without having defended himself in Mexico”,
The moment that Guzmán's defender has chosen to speak is interesting.
Just this Tuesday, one of the most anticipated trials of recent times begins in New York, at least in Mexico.
The United States justice sits on the bench the great police chief of the years of National Action in the Government of the country, Genaro García Luna.
Head of the investigators of the old Prosecutor's Office in the years of Vicente Fox (2000-2006), head of the security strategy during the mandate of Felipe Calderón (2006-2012), García Luna faces accusations of drug trafficking and organized crime.
Prosecutors assume that the former policeman collaborated during all those years with the Sinaloa Cartel.
The tendency to send letters is not just an El Chapo thing.
In May 2019, his mother, María Consuelo Loera, sent a letter to President López Obrador, asking him to intervene with the authorities of the neighboring country, and ensure that the drug trafficker could receive visits from relatives.
At that time, the president, who has maintained a striking relationship with El Chapo's mother over the years, coming to greet her on a visit to Sinaloa, agreed: "I gave instructions so that all the facilities are given and the sisters can go visit him and help them in accordance with the laws and regulations they have in that country,” he said.
It is not known how the president's efforts ended, but the fact is that Guzmán has put the strategy of the letter back into operation.
"Since Guzmán arrived in the United States, he has been confined, receiving cruel treatment," read the letter, signed by his lawyer.
“He has been isolated, without having contact with other people, segregated in a cell, without the custodians being able to communicate with him in Spanish.
An offense against human dignity, a violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms, ”he continues.
“In the six years that Guzmán has been in prison, they have never taken him out of his cell to get sunlight, not even for a minute.
From March 2022 to date, they have authorized six or seven calls with his lawyer, ”he ditch.
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