The Mexican drug trafficker turned 63 amid fear that the COVID-19 virus could infect prisoners.
Mexican drug trafficker Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera turned 63 on April 4. However, this time he was unable to organize the parties to which he was accustomed, even when he was held in Mexican high-security prisons.
This year, the name day of the founder of the Sinaloa cartel went unnoticed in the midst of the whirlwind of information about the coronavirus that keeps the main countries of the world in confinement, few remembered the birthday of the drug trafficker who since July 18, 2019, fulfills a life sentence plus 30 years in ADX Florence prison in Colorado, known as the most brutal prison facility in the USA.
One of the few people who congratulated Chapo Guzmán through social networks was his wife, Emma Coronel, who published a photo of a painting of Guzmán Loera when he was young, wearing a crown, through his Instagram account.
The image was accompanied by the phrase “happy birthday” and the song “From head to toe” by Los Nuevos Rebeldes, a northern Mexican music group.
There is an alarm situation in the prisons of the United States, since this country is currently the most affected by the pandemic, recording thousands of deaths.
The place where the founder of the Sinaloa cartel is located has extreme security measures, especially in the 78-bed Control Unit for the most dangerous inmates. Where social distancing has been going on long before the pandemic.
Guzmán Loera remains locked up for 23 hours, and when he goes out to sunbathe he does it inside a kind of cage that prevents him from having contact with other prisoners. Food is also received inside his cell, so he remains in complete isolation.
The report from the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), updated to April 26, indicates that 1,046 inmates and 330 employees have tested positive for COVID-19 in federal system jails, of which 390 inmates and 124 workers have recovered.
The latest statements by Chapo Guzmán’s lawyers indicated that the drug trafficker was working hard together with defenders to file an appeal before the US authorities.
In his Twitter account, quoting lawyer Jeffrey Lichtman, journalist Keegan Hamilton, who covered the so-called trial of the century, assured that the Mexican drug trafficker spends his free time working on his appeal.
“El Chapo is working on the paperwork from his cell,” said the defender, who commented on the trial that “it was the United States trying to demonstrate to the world how special and fair its system was … I really think it failed”, the journalist published in February.
Guzmán Loera will appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, his case number 19-2239, filed on July 22, 2019, for the alleged misconduct of the trial against him in the Eastern District Court of New York, where he was found guilty of 10 crimes related to drug trafficking and money laundering.
A 2019 Hamilton publication in which jurors acknowledged that they violated the rules that had been imposed on them during the trial, such as not informing themselves through social media on the subject, is one of the main letters of the drug trafficker’s defense.
Reading the sentence on July 17, 2019, Judge Brian M. Cogan affirmed that there were “mountains of evidence” that condemned the former head of the Sinaloa cartel and made it clear that during the trial, “I saw the most terrible criminal characteristics of all my life as a judge ”.
On July 22, 2019, Marc Fernich, another of the defenders of “El Chapo” presented a document to the Court of Appeals in which he requested the review of the sentence of life imprisonment plus 30 years in prison, as well as the payment of USD 12,166 million, dictated by Judge Brian M. Cogan.
Source: Infobae
The Mazatlan Post
