Lawyers for 'El Chapo' Guzman to resist his extradition to US

[webfact]

Lawyers for 'El Chapo' Guzman to resist his extradition to US



MEXICO CITY: -- The lawyer for Mexican drug lord Joaquin Guzman said he will resist extradition to the United States for his client.

The kingpin known as El Chapo is wanted on charges including drugs trafficking and money laundering.

He could be sent to the US within a few months, but the timing may depend on injunctions filed by his legal team.

“We find ourselves in a constitutional context, between right and wrong, that’s to say, as his defence counsel, I maintain that national sovereignty, the sovereignty of Mexican homeland institutions, must be respected for the carrying out of justice.”

Security forces recaptured the fugitive cartel leader six months after a daring escape from prison. He blew his cover through a series of slip ups, including an attempt to make a movie about his life.

-- (c) Copyright Euronews 2016-01-11

[craigt3365]

Watching the show Narcos. Extradition was the #1 thing the narcos in Colombia feared. Even more than death.

[shunter]

Could always fall out of his government provided helicopter transport I suppose .Solves all the problems then.

No real loss to the world if such an''accident'' happened.

[oslooskar]

Could always fall out of his government provided helicopter transport I suppose .Solves all the problems then.

Such action wouldn't solve anything! The moment Guzman hit the ground someone would step up and take his place. Unfortunately the United States government is fighting a battle it can't possibly win.

[webfact]

MEXICO CITY (AP) - Mexico notifies recaptured drug lord Guzman that he is wanted in US, beginning extradition proceedings

[webfact]

Mexico begins extradition proceedings against drug lord
By E. EDUARDO CASTILLO

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico began the process of extraditing drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman to the United States, two days after the famed fugitive was recaptured following a dramatic, months-long hunt featuring movies stars, sewer escapes and bloody shootouts.

Officials warned that the process could take a long time as Guzman's lawyers file legal appeals and maneuver to keep their client in Mexico, where he has already escaped from maximum security prisons twice.

On Sunday, agents formally notified Guzman that he was wanted in the United States. In a statement, the Attorney General's Office said Mexican agents assigned to the international police agency Interpol served two arrest warrants to the drug lord, who is being held at the Altiplano prison following his capture by Mexican marines on Friday.

Guzman's defense now has three days to present arguments against extradition and 20 days to present supporting evidence, beyond the plethora of other appeals they have already started filing.

Guzman's powerful Sinaloa cartel smuggles multi-ton shipments of cocaine and marijuana as well as manufacturing and transporting methamphetamines and heroin, mostly to the U.S. He is wanted in various U.S. states and his July escape deeply embarrassed the government of President Enrique Pena Nieto and strained ties between the countries.

Guzman's attorney Juan Pablo Badillo has said the defense has already filed six motions to challenge extradition requests.

Badillo said that his client shouldn't be extradited to the U.S. because "our country must respect national sovereignty, the sovereignty of its institutions to impart justice."

On Saturday, a Mexican federal law enforcement official said the quickest Guzman could be extradited would be six months, but even that is not likely because of the many appeals filed by his lawyers. He said that the appeals are usually turned down, but each one means a judge has to schedule a hearing.

"That can take weeks or months, and that delays the extradition," he said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment. "We've had cases that take six years."

Mexico's willingness to extradite Guzman is a sharp turnaround from the last time he was captured in 2014, when then-Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam said the extradition would happen only after he finished his sentence in Mexico in "300 or 400 years."

Guzman was re-apprehended on Friday after a shootout between gunmen and Mexican marines at the home in Los Mochis, a seaside city in Guzman's home state of Sinaloa. Five suspects were killed and six others arrested. One marine was injured.

Mexican authorities say actor Sean Penn's contacts with Guzman helped them track the fugitive down — even if he slipped away from an initial raid on the hideout where the Hollywood actor apparently met him.

Penn's article on Guzman was published late Saturday by Rolling Stone magazine, a day after the drug lord's recapture. In it, Penn wrote of elaborate security precautions, but also said that as he flew to Mexico on Oct 2 for the meeting, "I see no spying eyes, but I assume they are there."

He was apparently right.

A Mexican federal law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not permitted to comment on the issue, told the Associated Press the Penn interview led authorities to Guzman in the area of Tamazula, a rural part of Durango state.

They raided Guzman's remote hideout a few days after the interview and narrowly missed capturing Guzman, whose July escape from Mexico's top security prison — though a mile-long (1.5-kilometer) tunnel — had embarrassed President Enrique Pena Nieto and made his capture a national priority.

Describing the capture, Attorney General Arely Gomez said that investigators had been aided in locating Guzman by documented contacts between his attorneys and "actors and producers" she said were interested in making a film about him, though she did not name them.

Two months after that close call, marines finally caught him in a residential neighborhood of Los Mochis, where they'd been monitoring a suspected safe house. Guzman was able to escape via storm drains and exited a manhole in the street. But he was captured in a vehicle on the highway.

In the interview in Rolling Stone, Guzman defends his work at the head of the world's biggest drug trafficking organization, one blamed for thousands of killings. When asked if he is to blame for high addiction rates, he responds: "No, that is false, because the day I don't exist, it's not going to decrease in any way at all. Drug trafficking? That's false."

Penn wrote that Guzman was interested in having a movie filmed on his life and wanted Mexican actress Kate del Castillo, who had portrayed a drug trafficker in a television series, involved in the project.

"He was interested in seeing the story of his life told on film, but would entrust its telling only to Kate," wrote Penn, who appears in a photo posted with the interview shaking hands with Guzman.

Penn's representatives have not commented on the claims by Mexican officials.
___

Associated Press writer Christopher Sherman in Los Mochis, Mark Stevenson in Mexico City and Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.


-- (c) Associated Press 2016-01-11

[Srikcir]

"national sovereignty, the sovereignty of Mexican homeland institutions, must be respected for the carrying out of justice.”

I don't think that's El Chapo's theme song.

[craigt3365]

In the interview in Rolling Stone, Guzman defends his work at the head of the world's biggest drug trafficking organization, one blamed for thousands of killings. When asked if he is to blame for high addiction rates, he responds: "No, that is false, because the day I don't exist, it's not going to decrease in any way at all. Drug trafficking? That's false."

Pure BS. No drugs means no addiction, and no killings from the gangs that distribute this stuff. Great show out called Narcos. Interesting to see how they created this mess by importing cocaine into the US. It was an unknown before the early 80's.

[Colabamumbai]

It would be America not Mexico requesting extradition.

[Thaidream]

The best way to get rid of drug gangs is simply to decriminalize and make it available to the masses in the same manner marijuana is in the process of being decriminalized.. When there is no profit in drugs the drug gangs go away and half the prisons can be emptied and law enforcement can do other things like catch people who actually commit crimes. In my mind, if you want to use drugs, go for it as long as you do it in your own home and do not impose upon any other citizen. We'll send the coroner in the morning.

[Colabamumbai]

As he said himself, taking him out of the business will not reduce the smuggling or consumption.

[erobando]

In the interview in Rolling Stone, Guzman defends his work at the head of the world's biggest drug trafficking organization, one blamed for thousands of killings. When asked if he is to blame for high addiction rates, he responds: "No, that is false, because the day I don't exist, it's not going to decrease in any way at all. Drug trafficking? That's false."

Pure BS. No drugs means no addiction, and no killings from the gangs that distribute this stuff. Great show out called Narcos. Interesting to see how they created this mess by importing cocaine into the US. It was an unknown before the early 80's.

Unknown before the early 80's? Cocaine was used in the US as far back as the 19th Century.

In any event, I think you're misunderstanding El Chapo's response. He's saying he doesn't feel responsible because, even if he's not involved in drug trafficking, someone else do it.

And isn't "Narco's" a TV drama? I don't suggest using fiction as a primary source to understand history.

[craigt3365]

It would be America not Mexico requesting extradition.

America has an arrest warrant out for Guzman. But it's Mexico that's initiating the extradition process. The US can not do it. It's up to Mexico.

http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/mexico-moves-to-extradite-el-chapo-to-u-s-20160111

The Mexican government initiated proceedings this weekend to extradite the notorious drug kingpin Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán Loera to the United States. The announcement that it would seek to extradite the head of the Sinaloa cartel came Saturday from the Mexican attorney general's office.

[craigt3365]

Unknown before the early 80's? Cocaine was used in the US as far back as the 19th Century.

In any event, I think you're misunderstanding El Chapo's response. He's saying he doesn't feel responsible because, even if he's not involved in drug trafficking, someone else do it.

And isn't "Narco's" a TV drama? I don't suggest using fiction as a primary source to understand history.

Well put. I should have said Cocaine was not in wide spread use until the late 70's or early 80's. Cocaine has been in the Americas for several thousand years. But became a huge problem when the Colombian drug cartels began shipping it in mass volumes. It's well documented. Here's some interesting articles on this:

http://www.drugfreeworld.org/drugfacts/cocaine/a-short-history.html

In the late 1970s, Colombian drug traffickers began setting up an elaborate network for smuggling cocaine into the US.

Traditionally, cocaine was a rich man’s drug, due to the large expense of a cocaine habit. By the late 1980s, cocaine was no longer thought of as the drug of choice for the wealthy. By then, it had the reputation of America’s most dangerous and addictive drug, linked with poverty, crime and death.

In the early 1990s, the Colombian drug cartels produced and exported 500 to 800 tons of cocaine a year, shipping not only to the US but also to Europe and Asia. The large cartels were dismantled by law enforcement agencies in the mid-1990s, but they were replaced by smaller groups—with more than 300 known active drug smuggling organizations in Colombia today.

As of 2008, cocaine had become the second most trafficked illegal drug in the world.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/business/inside/colombian.html

Since the 1970's, Colombia has been home to some of the most violent and sophisticated drug trafficking organizations in the world. What started as a small cocaine smuggling business has, in the last thirty years, blossomed into an enormous multi-national cocaine empire. Traffickers today have enough capital under their control to build sophisticated smuggling equipment, such as a high tech submarine that was recently discovered by the Colombian National Police. Colombian cocaine traffickers had hired engineering experts from Russia and the United States to help with the design of the submarine, which apparently would have been used to secretly ship large quantities of cocaine to the United States.

Traffickers started out with much more modest goals. In the mid-1970s, marijuana traffickers in Colombia began exporting small quantities of cocaine to the United States hidden in suitcases. At that point, cocaine could be processed for $1500/kilo in jungle labs and could be sold on the streets of America for as much as $50,000/kilo.

No doubt Narcos is a TV show, but it's based on the true life story of these events. It's got live scenes from Colombia pasted in. Fantastic show and very educational!