Five years after being extradited to the US, the Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán is pointing fingers at what he says are the real powers behind the drug trade on both sides of the border.
Through his attorney, Mariel Colón, one of the few people allowed to have regular contact with him, Guzmán said that for the drug war to stop, authorities would have to go after “politicians on both sides of the border.”
“For years, authorities have put away these alleged leaders, but it is not serving any purpose. But if you go after politicians that are allowing this to happen, it’s a different thing,” Colón told Insider. “That’s what he has expressed before. That’s what he thinks.”
Guzmán is aware that he may be a political instrument for the US and Mexican governments, Colón said.
“Every new US president has his trophy. With Trump was Chapo. After him, Biden has his trophy as well,” Colón added. “It’s always been just politics.”
In 2019, Guzmán, who is believed to be 65, was sentenced to life in prison on multiple drug-related charges. Since then, he has been held in solitary confinement at the Florence Administrative Maximum Facility, aka ADX Florence, a “supermax” facility in Colorado regarded as the US’s most secure prison.
Guzmán gets only one hour outside a day and is allowed 15 minutes of phone calls a month with three people vetted by the US government: his mother, one of his sisters, and his youngest child.
“Guzmán has been in complete isolation. He had no access to any recreational area or access to any other area around the prison other than his cell,” Colón said.
In 2020, his legal team submitted an appeal complaining that he faced “inhumane conditions,” which was dismissed by a federal judge. Guzmán’s treatment, which his attorneys say is “torture” and the result of a “political vendetta,” has not changed.
Source: El Financiero
