Thread: U.S. official: Mexican drug lord Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman arrested

U.S. official: Mexican drug lord Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman arrested in joint Mexico-U.S. operation.

Sinaloa Cartel chief 'Chapo" Guzman arrested

By Evan Perez and Ray Sanchez, CNN
updated 11:50 AM EST, Sat February 22, 2014

(CNN) -- Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, the boss of one of Mexico's most powerful drug trafficking operations, was arrested in Mexico, a U.S. official told CNN Saturday.

The official said Guzman, accompanied by a female, was captured in a joint operation with Mexican marines and Drug Enforcement Administration authorities overnight at a hotel in the beach resort of Mazatlán.

The operation had been in the works for four or five weeks, the official said.

Guzman, who authorities say has eluded capture for years, is wanted in the United States on multiple federal drug trafficking charges and last year was named a Public Enemy No. 1 by the Chicago Crime Commission.

His nickname, which means "Shorty," matches his 5-foot-6-inch frame.

Guzman escaped from a high-security Mexican prison in 2001 and avoided being caught because of his enormous power to bribe corrupt local, state and federal Mexican officials.

Since 2009, Guzmán has been included in Forbes' World's Most Powerful People list.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/22/world/...est/index.html

Confiscate ALL of his wealth.
Drug lord 'El Chapo' Guzman captured in Mexico, report says

Published February 22, 2014Associated Press

• 
  FILE 1993: Joaquin Guzman Loera, or "El Chapo" Guzman, is shown to the media after his arrest at the high security prison of Almoloya de Juarez, on the outskirts of Mexico City. A senior U.S. law enforcement official said Saturday, Feb. 22, 2014 that Guzman, the head of Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel, was captured alive overnight in the beach resort town of Mazatlan, Mexico.(A20132013)
  

The head of Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel was captured overnight by U.S. and Mexican authorities at a hotel in Mazatlan, Mexico, the Associated Press has learned.

A senior U.S. law enforcement official said Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman was taken alive overnight in the beach resort town. The official was not authorized to discuss the arrest and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Guzman, 56, was found with an unidentified woman. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the Marshals Service were "heavily involved" in the capture, the official said. No shots were fired.

Guzman faces multiple federal drug trafficking indictments in the U.S. and is on the DEA's most-wanted list. His drug empire stretches throughout North America and reaches as far away as Europe and Australia. His cartel has been heavily involved in the bloody drug war that has torn through parts of Mexico for the last several years.

Known as a legendary outlaw and the world's most powerful and elusive drug lord, Guzman had been pursued for several weeks. His arrest comes on the heels of the takedown of several top Sinaloa operatives in the last few months and at least 10 mid-level cartel members in the last week.

The son of Sinaloa's co-leader and Guzman's partner, Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada, was arrested in November after entering Arizona, where he had an appointment with U.S. immigration authorities to arrange legal status for his wife.

The following month, Zambada's main lieutenant was killed as Mexican helicopter gunships sprayed bullets at his mansion in the Gulf of California resort of Puerto Penasco in a four-hour gunbattle. Days later, police in the Netherlands arrested Zambada's flamboyant top enforcer as he arrived in Amsterdam.

Guzman's capture ended a long and storied manhunt. He was rumored to live everywhere from Argentina to Guatemala since he slipped out in 2001 from prison in a laundry truck -- a storied feat that fed his larger-than-life persona. Because insiders aided his escape, rumors circulated for years that he was helped and protected by former Mexican President Felipe Calderon's government, which vanquished some of his top rivals.

In more than a decade on the run, Guzman transformed himself from a middling Mexican capo into arguably the most powerful drug trafficker in the world. His fortune has grown to more than $1 billion, according to Forbes magazine, which listed him among the "World's Most Powerful People" and ranked him above the presidents of France and Venezuela.

His Sinaloa Cartel grew bloodier and more powerful, taking over much of the lucrative trafficking routes along the U.S. border, including such prized cities as Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez. Guzman's play for power against local cartels caused a bloodbath in Tijuana and made Juarez one of the deadliest cities in the world. In little more than a year, Mexico's biggest marijuana bust, 134 tons, and its biggest cultivation were tied to Sinaloa, as were a giant underground methamphetamine lab in western Mexico and hundreds of tons of precursor chemicals seized in Mexico and Guatemala.

His cartel's tentacles now extend as far as Australia thanks to a sophisticated, international distribution system for cocaine and methamphetamines.
Guzman did all that with a $7 million bounty on his head and while evading thousands of law enforcement agents from the U.S. and other countries devoted to his capture. A U.S. federal indictment unsealed in San Diego in 1995 charges Guzman and 22 members of his organization with conspiracy to import over eight tons of cocaine and money laundering. A provisional arrest warrant was issued as a result of the indictment, according to the state department.

Guzman is still celebrated in folk songs and is said to have enjoyed deep protection from humble villagers in the rugged hills of Sinaloa and Durango where he has hidden from authorities. He is also thought to have contacts inside law enforcement that helped him evade capture, including a near-miss in February 2012 in the southern Baja California resort of Cabo San Lucas just after an international meeting of foreign ministers. He was vacationing in Cabo during a visit by then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

"There's no drug-trafficking organization in Mexico with the scope, the savvy, the operational ability, expertise and knowledge as the Sinaloa cartel," said one former U.S. law enforcement official, who couldn't be quoted by name for security reasons. "You've kind of lined yourself up the New York Yankees of the drug trafficking world."

More than 70,000 people have been killed in drug violence since former President Calderon deployed thousands of soldiers to drug hotspots upon taking office on Dec. 1, 2006. Many say his government's assault on drug cartels and arrest of kingpins actually fueled the growth of Sinaloa and its major rival, the Zetas, which are now going head-to-heard for lucrative territory.

The two are battling for Nuevo Laredo, a play Guzman lost to the Zetas in 2005, and hitting each other deep inside their respective territories. Sinaloa took over a key Zeta port in Veracruz, while bands of Zetas have attacked their rival deep inside the cartel's home, western Sinaloa and Jalisco states.
The conflict has led to the gruesome dumping of dozens of bodies by both organizations in their battlegrounds.

Authorities said the battle also weakened the Sinaloa cartel and that key hits on the top leadership in Guzman's organization had shaken up his inner circle. In the first months of 2012, the Mexican army and federal police arrested a half dozen key Sinaloa people, including two major cocaine suppliers and a man described as the head of Guzman's security detail.

In April last year, a video made the rounds on the Internet of a man whom U.S. authorities believed was Guzman, possibly indicating a security breach in his inner circle. In 2012, Colombian police seized 116 properties worth $15 million that they say were bought for Guzman, while the U.S. Treasury Department announced that it was placing financial sanctions on a wife and several of his sons.

While his capture may have symbolic importance, many, including Guzman's cartel partner, Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada, say it won't stop the violence or flow of drugs through Mexico to the United States.

"When it comes to the capos, jailed, dead or extradited -- their replacements are ready," Zambada said in an exclusive interview published in Proceso magazine in April 2010.

Guzman's success and infamy surpassed Colombia's Pablo Escobar, who was gunned down by police in 1993 after waging a decade-long reign of terror in the South American country, killing hundreds of police, judges, journalists and politicians.

Growing up poor, Guzman was drawn to the money being made by the flow of illegal drugs through his home state of Sinaloa.

He joined the Guadalajara cartel, run by Mexican Godfather Miguel Angel Gallardo, and rose quickly through the ranks as a ruthless businessman and skilled networker, making key contacts with politicians and police to ensure his loads made it through without problems.

After Gallardo was arrested in 1989, the gang split, and Guzman took control of Sinaloa's operations.

The Sinaloa cartel violently seized lucrative drug routes from rivals and built sophisticated tunnels under the U.S. border to move its loads.

In 1993, gunmen linked to the Tijuana-based Arrellano Felix cartel attempted to assassinate Guzman at the Guadalajara airport but instead killed Roman Catholic Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo, outraging Mexicans.

Police arrested Guzman weeks later before his escape from El Puente Grande prison in 2001. At the time of his escape, Guzman had been serving a 20-year sentence for bribery and criminal association in a maximum-security prison in Mexico.

He was rumored to have once entered a restaurant in Culiacan, capital of Sinaloa state, where his henchmen confiscated every patron's cellphone so their boss could eat without fear of an ambush. He was also rumored to have staged an elaborate public wedding in 2007 to an 18-year-old bride that was attended by officials and local police.

Federal police say they raided the town that day, but got there just a few hours too late.

Guzman had long been reported to move around frequently, using private aircraft, bulletproof SUVs and even all-terrain vehicles.

His location was part of Mexican folklore, with rumors circulating of him being everywhere from Guatemala to almost every corner of Mexico, especially its "Golden Triangle," a mountainous, marijuana-growing region straddling the northern states of Sinaloa, Durango and Chihuahua.

An archbishop in northern Durango state said in April 2009 that Guzman lived in a town nearby. Days later, investigators found the bodies of two slain army lieutenants with a note: "Neither the government nor priests can handle El Chapo."

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/02...o-report-says/

Detentions of major Mexico drug chiefs

7 hours ago

Related Stories

• A Mexican drug cartel's rise to dominance The Week (RSS)
• Mexico captures No.1 drug kingpin 'Shorty' GuzmanReuters
• Vigilantes enter Mexican drug cartel's key bastionAFP
• Mexico captures drug kingpin 'El Chapo' GuzmanAFP
• Mexico captures suspected drug lord wanted in United States Reuters

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Top Mexican drug cartel captures or killings in recent years:

—Feb. 22, 2014: Authorities say Mexican and U.S. officials capture the world's most powerful drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman in the beach resort of Mazatlan.

—July 15, 2013: Authorities in northern Mexico capture Miguel Angel Trevino Morales, alias "Z-40," leader of the brutal Zetas cartel.

—Oct. 7, 2012: Mexican marines kill Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano, alias "El Lazca," a founder and top leader of the Zetas. His body is later stolen from a funeral home. Trevino Morales takes over the Zetas.

—Oct. 6, 2012: Mexican marines arrest alleged Zetas regional leader Salvador Alfonso Martinez Escobedo, suspected of involvement in massacres and the killing of U.S. citizen David Hartley in 2010 on Falcon Lake, which straddles the U.S.-Mexico border.

—Sept. 12, 2012: Mexican marines capture purported top Gulf Cartel leader Jorge Eduardo Costilla Sanchez, alias "El Coss." U.S. authorities had offered a $5 million reward for his arrest.

—Dec. 9, 2010: Mexican federal police kill Nazario Moreno Gonzalez, leader of the La Familia Michoacana cartel, during a gunfight in the village of El Alcalde. His body was never recovered, and rumors have persisted that Moreno, known as "the Craziest One," is still alive.

—July 29, 2010: Mexican army raids a house in the town of Zapopan and kills Ignacio "Nacho" Coronel, one of the top leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel.

—Dec. 16, 2009: Mexican marines kill Arturo Beltran Leyva, leader of the Beltran Leyva cartel, in a shootout in Cuernavaca.

http://news.yahoo.com/detentions-maj...185026626.html

As Mexico catches cartel boss, others wait in wings

World | Agence-France Presse | Updated: February 23, 2014 20:41 IST


Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman after his arrest (AP Photo)


Mexico City: Mexico has finally caught its most powerful drug kingpin, but others with nicknames like "El Mayo," "La Tuta" and "El Mencho" remain on the loose, ready to take the crown.
While the capture of Sinaloa cartel boss Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman is a victory for President Enrique Pena Nieto's government, his arrest could unleash a new wave of violence as rivals tussle for his turf.
"There's going to be a huge void with this capture," Mike Vigil, a former chief of international operations at the US Drug Enforcement Administration, told AFP.
"There's a strong possibility that this may increase the violence in Mexico."
Guzman, who was captured by Mexican marines in the Pacific resort city of Mazatlan on Saturday, made powerful enemies during his time at the top.
- Would-be suitors -
Many things can happen in the wake of his capture, security experts said.
In the least bloody scenario, Guzman's main associate, veteran cartel capo Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada, will grab the reins and continue business as usual.
But internal strife could hit the cartel if an ambitious underling decides to fight his way to the top.
"We are now looking for violence between Chapo's kids and El Mayo's kids, the next generation trying to get control of the cartel," a US security official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Rival gangs could also smell blood and make incursions into Sinaloa's territory, sparking the type of turf wars that have killed more than 77,000 people in Mexico in the past seven years.
The threat could come from the once-powerful Zetas cartel, even though the northeastern-based gang was weakened after its leader's arrest last year, analysts said.
Even loose allies could make a grab for it, like the cult-like Knights Templar gang based in the western state of Michoacan and led by a former teacher, Servando "La Tuta" Gomez.
"There's a very strong possibility that other organizations such as the Zetas and the Knights Templar may try to attack the Sinaloa cartel and give them a deadly blow," Vigil said.
The Knights Templar, however, have been on the ropes since civilian vigilante militias emerged last year and drove them out of several towns.
The US security official, who requested anonymity because he is involved in cartel investigations, said a prime candidate to become Mexico's top drug lord is Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, alias "El Mencho," leader of the Jalisco New General cartel.
The gang, based in western Jalisco state, has been fighting the Knights Templar and the emergence of vigilantes has helped Oseguera's gang grab half of Michoacan, making it the "fastest growing" cartel, the official said.
"I think Mencho is now the most important trafficker in Mexico," the official said, adding that Guzman's arrest "will place Mencho in an open war against whatever remains of the Sinaloa cartel."
"El Chapo tried to have him killed a few years ago" because he saw him as a threat, he said.
- Sinaloa not dead yet -Although Guzman's associate Zambada is qualified to take over Sinaloa, he is also being hunted down by security forces who "almost got him" recently, the official said.
Guzman's arrest came after the capture of a dozen Sinaloa operatives, including top hitmen close to Zambada.
"It is a great strategic blow to the Sinaloa cartel. The drug trafficking map of Mexico will be reorganized," said Raul Benitez Manaut, security expert at Mexico's National Autonomous University.
But the Sinaloa cartel could easily weather the storm because it is a massive criminal organization, structured like a conglomerate that can still operate when its CEO is absent, analysts said.
"The most important cartel remains the one in Sinaloa. The others are much smaller," said Mexican security expert Samuel Gonzalez, a former federal narcotics prosecutor.
"The Sinaloa cartel was hurt, but it won't collapse," Gonzalez said. "Every space tends to be filled. There will be someone to fill the (drug) market to the United States."

http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/as...n-wings-487152

Got Shorty: Guzman caught in joint U.S.-Mexico raid, official says


Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman is taken to a helicopter in handcuffs by Mexican marines at a navy hangar in Mexico City. (Eduardo Verdugo / Associated Press / February 22, 2014)


By Tracy Wilkinson and Richard A. Serrano
February 22, 2014, 11:16 a.m.


MEXICO CITY -- Mexico’s most wanted drug lord, Joaquin Guzman, known as "El Chapo," was captured Saturday in a joint operation by Mexican and U.S. federal agents, a senior U.S. official said.

Guzman, long considered the top prize and most elusive figure in the ongoing drug war that has left tens of thousands of Mexicans dead, was taken into custody before dawn at a hotel in the seaside Sinaloa resort town of Mazatlan.

Guzman led the Sinaloa cartel, the most powerful, richest and oldest of the drug-trafficking networks in Mexico. The group is responsible for the shipment of tons of cocaine and marijuana to the U.S.

FULL COVERAGE: Mexico Under Siege

The senior official said Guzman was being transported to Mexico City, and reports from Sinaloa said the Mazatlan airport had been completely shut down. The source said no shots were fired in the capture, which was based on information from an informant. Mexican sources said DNA tests were being conducted to verify Guzman’s identity. A photograph of a bare-chested man arrested in the operation was being circulated in Mexico; it did not look very much like Guzman, but he has not been officially seen in public for many years.

In recent days, the Mexican marines have been raiding numerous properties in Sinaloa belonging to close associates of Guzman and had captured several high-level lieutenants. It is possible one of them fingered Guzman’s whereabouts.

Guzman was arrested in Guatemala in 1993 but escaped dramatically from prison in 2001 -- supposedly by hiding in a laundry cart -- and has been on the lam ever since, despite numerous reported sightings.
His latest wife, a former beauty queen, gave birth to twins three years ago in the Los Angeles area. U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration officials tracked her, in hopes of finding Guzman, but were unsuccessful.

The U.S. offered a $5-million bounty for his capture. In Washington, Department of Justice officials declined to comment before the Mexican government made an official announcement. But one federal law enforcement official said interest was high in working with the Mexican government to get Guzman extradited to the U.S. to face charges.

“He’s already escaped from one Mexican jail,” the official said. “Now we want him.”

Guzman, who is 56 or 57, has close-set eyes and stands about 5 feet 6, earning him his widely known nickname "El Chapo," Spanish for "Shorty."

It is unclear what his removal from Mexico’s vast drug-trafficking business will mean. Several experts said he was already sufficiently distanced from day-to-day operations that his absence will not be noticed. In the past, the elimination of a top drug lord has led to a bloody power struggle among the next tier of lieutenants. In the case of the Sinaloa cartel, Guzman’s long-time partner, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, already controlled much of the operation.

“It will mean absolutely nothing. It does not mean the end of the Sinaloa cartel,” Ricardo Ravelo, a prominent writer on Mexican drug-trafficking, said in a radio interview.

But it will be, he added, an important victory for the government of President Enrique Pena Nieto, who has been accused of ignoring the drug cartel problem and, in fact, favoring the Sinaloa cartel over its even more bloody rivals like the Zetas

Guzman has been most notably charged in two federal grand jury indictments in the U.S. – in Chicago in 2008, and In El Paso in 2012.

In the Chicago case, the more sweeping of the two, he is charged along with 10 other Sinaloan cartel leaders in a massive indictment for moving heroin and cocaine into this country after his organization merged with another “affiliated cartel” and formed an alliance knows as “the Federation.”

But that agreement later fractured, and since then, according to the “special grand jury“ impaneled just to look at the cartel case, Guzman and other leaders “became engaged in a violent war in Mexico over various issues, including control of lucrative narcotics trafficking routes into the United States.”

Guzman’s network concentrated on “trafficking activities to import multi-ton quantities of cocaine from Central and South American countries, including Colombia and Panama, to the interior of Mexico,” the indictment said.

Guzman’s group then oversaw “shipments of hundreds of kilograms at a time” of cocaine, “as well as multi-kilogram quantities of heroin, from Mexico across the United States and then into and throughout the United States.”

The grand jury identified Guzman as “the leader” and “head” of the operation, and said he often personally obtained and negotiated the price for cocaine and heroin flowing up into the U.S.

To first get the drugs into Mexico, for movement into the U.S., the Guzman cartel used “Boeing 747 cargo aircraft, private aircraft, submarines and other submersible and semi-submersible vessels, container ships, go-fast boats, fishing vessels, buses, rail cars, tractor-trailers and automobiles,” the indictment said.

The drugs were then “smuggled” to the U.S. border, the indictment said, and once over the border, the drugs were ferried by truck drivers to major cities across the U.S., including Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Detroit, Philadelphia, Cincinnati and Washington. Another route went to Vancouver, Canada.

As the drugs flowed north, the money moved south, the indictment said, with “millions of dollars in cash” stored in safe houses as it was gradually transferred to the cartel in Mexico. Guzman himself, the indictment said, “regularly received multimillion-dollar payments.”

To keep the drugs and money flowing, cartel operatives used “cellular telephones, satellite telephones, computers and hand-held PDAs,” the later otherwise known as Palm Pilots.

The Sinaloan cartel also was active in “obtaining guns and other weapons, bribing corrupt public officials, engaging in violence and threats of violence,” and other forms of intimidation.

They sought to acquire weapons from the U.S., and “discussed the use of violence against American and/or Mexican government buildings,” the indictment said.

The second federal indictment was filed under seal in April 2011 in El Paso, and U.S. authorities in West Texas did not announce it until February 2012. This time Guzman was named with 23 other cartel figures on charges focusing on cartel operations between El Paso and Ciudad Juarez in Mexico.

These charges came after two U.S. residents were killed on cartel orders in Ciudad Juarez. In one instance, after a cocaine and marijuana shipment went missing in the U.S., a cartel “kidnap team “ in 2009 grabbed an individual in Horizon City, Texas, tortured him in Ciudad Juarez and killed him. His mutilated body was later found there.

In a second episode in 2010, a bridegroom was kidnapped at his wedding in Ciudad Juarez, along with his brother and uncle. According to the indictment, all three were tortured and slain, their bodies discovered in the bed of a pickup.

“There are several assassins and hit-squad members,” said Joseph Arabit, special agent in charge for the Drug Enforcement Administration in El Paso, in announcing the indictment.

Guzman also has been charged in other indictments in San Diego and Arizona. In all, his maximum punishment if convicted range from the death penalty to life in prison with no parole.

http://www.latimes.com/world/worldno...4530&track=rss

PHOTOS: Inside the condo where Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman was captured

http://www.latimes.com/world/worldno...#ixzz2uB68YFCO

US Tracked Drug Lord's Cell Phones, Leading to Capture

NBCNews.com - 17 minutes ago