A lawyer for drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman said Wednesday his client now wants to be extradited as soon as possible to the United States because guards at a Mexican maximum-security prison won’t let him sleep.
Lawyer Jose Refugio Rodriguez said Guzman told him to negotiate with U.S. authorities for a lighter sentence and confinement at a medium-security prison.
Rodriguez told Radio Formula Wednesday he talked to Guzman Tuesday at the Altiplano prison west of Mexico City.
“He has reached the limit,” Rodriguez said. “It is an act of desperation.”
“He said to try to get a negotiation with the American government,” Rodriguez said, adding, “We know of agreements with other people for confinement in medium-security prisons … a much lower sentence.”
It was unclear what kind of agreements Rodriguez was referring to; though some Mexican drug suspects have reached some form of plea deals with U.S. authorities in the past, it is not clear any have ever been able to negotiate terms on where they will be held.
The U.S. Embassy in Mexico City said it does not comment on extraditions.
Guzman’s lawyers had previously vowed to fight extradition as long as possible, and Mexican officials had acknowledged it would take at least a year and perhaps more for the extradition process to work its way through Mexican courts.
But Rodriguez suggested it could be done in two months, presumably if Guzman dropped an estimated nine appeals his lawyers have filed.
However, Rodriguez said “we won’t drop the (legal) defense in Mexico until we have an agreement with the United States.”
Officials have acknowledged that guards at the Altilplano prison wake Guzman every four hours for a head count. He escaped the same prison in July and was recaptured in January.
The harsher regime — Guzman also has fewer visits than during his last stint in prison — seems to have broken him.
“I saw a defeated, humiliated man,” Rodriguez said.
In February, Rodriguez gave The Associated Press a copy of Guzman’s testimony in one of the cases against him. In it, the jailed drug lord accused prison authorities of torturing him “by waking him up, and said, “I feel like a sleepwalker.”
“My head and my ears always hurt and I feel bad all over,” Guzman said in the document.
The testimony also sheds light on the relatively permissive visitors’ schedule Guzman enjoyed at the maximum-security prison before his escape in July. It has been reduced since he was recaptured in January.
Guzman said that previously he had been give an hour-and-a-half every day to talk to his lawyer and an hour in the sun in a prison patio. Every nine days, he was allowed a four-hour conjugal visit and a four-hour family visit.
National security commissioner Renato Sales, whose responsibilities include overseeing federal prisons, said at a news conference Monday that Guzman’s human rights are in no way being violated at the Altiplano prison,
Sales pointed out that Guzman has escaped twice from Mexican prisons.
“Shouldn’t someone who twice escaped from maximum security prisons be subject to special security measures? The common sense answer is yes,” Sales said.
Guzman faces charges in a number of federal courts across the country, and authorities have not said which U.S. prosecutors will have the first crack at the drug lord. Therefore, at this point there is no one to negotiate such a deal — not that anyone would likely be willing to do so before Guzman had even set foot in a U.S. courtroom.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
Uh Uh! Mexico has the most corrupt prison system in the world. For a bottle of Tequila he could be out the next day.
Or taken out for good.
WE DON’T WANT HIM, YOU CAN KEEP HIM… SEE HOW SOFT AMERICA REALLY IS!!!
Sure, the Chapo wants to come to the US. How can you beat free room, board, nearly all the comforts of home, and free Obamacare? And no death penalty.
Hell I can get him out for 2 bottles of tequila
El Chapo must have realized that he isn’t going to be able to escape from his current cell. Transporting him to an American prison will provide him with several opportunities to possibly escape. Once in America he may be able to spot vulnerabilities in his new prison which will give him a chance to escape.
He escaped twice and was caught back twice. Loss of time and energy. He should keep his energy for his conjugal visits.
Leave him there and wake him every hour. God only know how many people he has killed and lives ruined.
Hah, I don’t care if he ever sleeps.
Have Chapo donate to Donald Trumps wall border, he has enough drug money to build it..
he has been running drugs for years, make him pay.
Exactly!
He wants to come to the US because he knows Obama will pardon him and make him a citizen. He was a big buyer of Obama’s gun deals.
I bet his people who dug him out of jail, are angered by Sean Penn ratting El Chappo out.
Execute him and just end this BS. He has had many people executed he should have been taken out and shot. Once a person is convicted of murder take them from the courtroom and them executed them with in minutes. Stop wasting money and time.
Too bad for you Chapo, you drug dealing, murdering piece of animal waste. America doesn’t want you or need you; it’s you who have seen the court system at work in the US. Knowing the right people with the right sum of money can buy you anything. But not for scum like you! There’s death row prisoners here, enough of them. And I would deem to say that some have repented their sins, but that doesn’t mean a thing except between them and God. If you have God, pray to Him for reprieve, or sleep. Sleep shouldn’t come easy for the likes of you. Your family may remain faithful to you, although I’d be surprised, and your ” private” visits are really over the top!!! Your lifestyle has ruined many lives and I don’t think you deserve privileges, and certainly nothing from America (Obama is on his way out!)
I will break him out for a bottle of Patron and a dozen tamales. I am El Guapo!
He embarrassed the Mexican government by escaping. What he is going through now is his punishment. Leave him in Mexico. We have enough of his kind here already.
Who is el guapo.