Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman has been extradited to the United States to face criminal charges in connection with his violent leadership of the trafficking syndicate known as the “Sinaloa Cartel.”
Guzman is charged in six separate indictments throughout the United States.
In a brief statement, the Justice Department offered its “gratitude’’ to the Mexican government for expediting the transfer.
Guzman, who has escaped Mexican prisons twice and led authorities on a months-long search in 2015, was flown out of the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso.
Among the U.S., charges lodged against him are conspiracy, organized crime, weapons possession, murder and money laundering.
Despite his ruthless reign, the U.S., has assured the Mexican government that Guzman will not face the prospect of the death penalty, which is not applied in Mexico.
Guzman made world headlines in 2015 when he slipped out of his cell in the maximum security Altiplano federal prison and through a mile-long tunnel to freedom. The dramatic escape prompted a worldwide manhunt which concluded last January with his arrest following a deadly shootout in Los Mochis, a Mexican coastal city of 250,000 in Guzman's home state of Sinaloa.
Attorney General Arely Gómez González had said the search had drawn few valuable clues until Guzman reached out to actors and producers and began planning a biopic. That tipped off investigators to his location, and Gómez said a journey to the rugged Sierra Madre by American actor Sean Penn drew authorities to Guzman.
El Chapo — meaning "Shorty" for his 5-foot-6 stature — has been an iconic figure in the drug trade for decades. He was first captured in Guatemala in 1993 and was extradited to Mexico. He was serving a 20-year sentence on drug-trafficking charges in a different prison when he pulled off an equally intricate escape in 2001. He was recaptured in Mexico in February 2014.
His grip on the multibillion-dollar cartel remained strong. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration says he was able to remain a force by communicating with his son and other cartel leaders through lawyers and others who visited him at the Altiplano prison outside Mexico City.
Guzman's transfer came in the waning hours of the Obama administration and amid concern about how the election of Donald Trump, whose promise to build a wall along the southern border could strain relations between the U.S. and Mexico.
