El Chapo’s famous arrests and even more famous escapes

• ‘El Chapo’ Guzman’s famous arrests.
• All the times Joaquín Guzmán Loera escaped captivity.
• El Chapo’s tactics for evading the law.

For many years, few people had heard of Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán. Although this capo already had a long career in the world of drug trafficking, it was not until after El Chapo’s many arrests and equally numerous escapes that his name became famous, not only along the most important drug trafficking routes, but also around the whole world.

The authorities had no idea that that humble orange seller who had become a driver for Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, later an errand boy for Amado Carrillo Fuentes ‘El Señor de los Cielos’, and then a gunman for the Guadalajara Cartel, would eventually become the most powerful drug lord in the world.

This, thanks to his leadership as the head of the Sinaloa Cartel, a criminal group that currently operates in 17 of the 32 states of the Mexican Republic and in approximately 50 nations around the world — or at least that is what is believed.

During his time as a fugitive, this famous criminal planned perfect routes to escape detection. However, after several captures, he started looking for the most precise and easiest ways to get out of prison.

The many arrests and escapes of El Chapo

Over a 20 year period, the capo fell into the hands of the authorities three times. And in the same way, the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel escaped twice from federal prisons.

According to CNN, the Sinaloa Cartel, which El Chapo led, came to control approximately 40% and 60% of drug trafficking in Mexico, with profits of around $3 billion a year.

El Chapo’s first arrests

El Chapo’s first arrest occurred in 1993. On June 9 in the country of Guatemala, Joaquín Guzmán had gone to that country to escape the police persecution that was unleashed against the cartels when Cardinal Juan Jesús Posadas Ocampo died in a shootout between mafias at the Guadalajara Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla International Airport.

As a result, El Chapo became a wanted criminal and he was finally arrested at the Talismán international bridge, a border crossing located between Guatemala and Mexico. Shortly thereafter he was extradited to Mexico where he spent eight years in high security prisons.

The first escape

On January 19, 2001, Guzmán escaped from the high-security prison in Puente Grande, Jalisco. How he did it still hasn’t been fully figured out. One of the theories about his escape is that he hid in a laundry cart from the prison where he was serving his sentence.

Covered by dirty clothes, he made it through the front door dressed as a woman. There are some other theories to explain how the capo escaped. However, regardless of how he did it, what matters is that he achieved his goal. In addition to letting the government know that they couldn’t win against him.

El Chapo’s second arrest

After being a fugitive from justice for more than 13 years, Joaquín Guzmán Loera was arrested a second time, adding to the list of El Chapo’s arrests and escapes. He was arrested on February 22, 2014 in a hotel in Mazatlán, Sinaloa.

Apparently Guzmán Loera was going to attend a party there. The operation had only been put together earlier that day. And before 7 AM, members of the Navy had arrested several people there, including El Chapo.

El Chapo escaped once again

The recapture of El Chapo in Mazatlan was regarded at the time as an incredible achievement on the part of the government of former Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto. But this time the Altiplano maximum security prison could not hold him in either.

Seventeen months were enough for Guzmán to escape from prison again. On July 11, 2015, El Chapo disappeared after entering the prison shower area where he usually went to bathe. That time, Joaquín managed to get out through a 1.5 kilometer tunnel that had been built between his cell and a half-built house on the middle of some road.

The third and last arrest?

Less than six months after his escape from the Altiplano, on January 8, 2016, the drug trafficker was recaptured in the city of Los Mochis, Sinaloa by marine infantry troops. Like the previous occasion, the drug trafficker was recaptured in his home state.

During his capture Guzmán’s allies lost their lives and a marine was wounded. A year after his arrest, the Secretary of Foreign Affairs announced that El Chapo had been extradited to the United States, where he was a wanted man. And that is where he is to this day, at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York, where an end to El Chapo’s arrests and escapes has possibly been reached.

The post The captures and escapes of ‘El Chapo’ appeared first on MundoNOW.