Surveillance video from inside Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman’s cell has been released showing the exact moment of escape.
Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, ranked one of the world’s “most powerful people” by Forbes, escaped a maximum security prison on Saturday via a 1,600 yard tunnel dug under his shower cell, NBC reported.
CBS News reports Guzman was the first Mexican drug trafficker to hire architects and engineers to build elaborate tunnels, complete with railways, to ferry drugs under the U.S.-Mexico border and he spent millions adapting them to use as escape routes from his many hideouts.
Guzman, who had bribed his way out of prison during a previous escape in 2001, was seen on video entering his shower area at 8.52 p.m. on Saturday, then disappeared, the National Security Commission (CNS) said.
From NBC News: — “The tunnel was so elaborate that it had ventilation and stairs, Mexico’s Security Commissioner Monte Alejandro Rubido said. A motorcycle that was used to remove dirt was also found, he said.
Flights were suspended at the nearby Toluca airport, while a manhunt stretched into surrounding states, the commission said.
Rubido said 18 employees from various part of the Altiplano prison, located about 56 miles west of Mexico City, had been taken in for questioning.” —
“El Chapo” Guzman is the Mexican drug lord who heads the Sinaloa Cartel, a criminal organization named after the Mexican Pacific coast state of Sinaloa where it was formed. Known as “El Chapo Guzmán” (“The Shorty Guzmán”, pronounced: for his 1.68 m (5 ft 6 in) stature, he became Mexico’s top drug kingpin in 2003 after the arrest of his rival Osiel Cárdenas of the Gulf Cartel, and until his February 2014 arrest, he was considered the “most powerful drug trafficker in the world” by the United States Department of the Treasury.
Guzmán has been ranked by Forbes magazine as one of the most powerful people in the world every year since 2009, ranking 41st, 60th and 55th respectively. He was named as the 10th richest man in Mexico (1,140th in the world) in 2011, with a net worth of roughly US$1 billion. The magazine also calls him the “biggest drug lord of all time”, and the DEA believes he has surpassed the influence and reach of Pablo Escobar, and now considers him “the godfather of the drug world.” In 2013, the Chicago Crime Commission named Guzmán “Public Enemy Number One” due to the influence of his criminal network in Chicago, though there is no evidence that Guzmán has ever been in that city. The last person to receive such notoriety was Al Capone in 1930.
