A federal jury in New York has found Sinaloa cartel boss Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera guilty of all 10 criminal counts against him, including the top charge of engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise. He faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison.

The jury of eight women and four men deliberated roughly 34 hours over 6 days.

Jurors have reached a verdict in the case of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán, the Mexican druglord accused of carrying out a sprawling criminal enterprise as chief of the Sinaloa cartel.

The jury deliberated more than 30 hours over six days.

Guzmán, 61, faces 10 counts, including engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, conspiracy to launder narcotics proceeds, international distribution of cocaine, heroin, marijuana and other drugs, and use of firearms. He has pleaded not guilty and could be sentenced to life in prison if convicted.

Over the course of two and a half months, a jury of eight women and four men in Brooklyn federal court heard testimony about unspeakable torture and ghastly murders, epic corruption at nearly every level of Mexico’s government, narco-mistresses and naked subterranean escapes, gold-plated AK-47s and monogrammed, diamond-encrusted pistols.

The prosecution’s case featured 200 hours of testimony from 56 witnesses. Fourteen of those witnesses — mostly admitted drug traffickers and cartel associates — were cooperating with prosecutors in hopes of reducing their own prison sentences.

There were also surveillance photos, intercepted phone calls and text messages involving Guzmán, as well as exhibits of blingy firepower and bricks of cocaine that dropped with the force of potato sacks.

In contrast, defense attorneys called just one witness and focused on undermining the credibility of cooperating witnesses. Defense attorney Jeffrey Lichtman said these witnesses had “lied every day of their lives — their miserable, selfish lives.”

Guzmán, once listed on Forbes’ Billionaires List, has long been a slippery and near-mythical figure. He escaped from a Mexican prison in 2001 in a laundry cart and again in 2015 through a tunnel. After he was recaptured in 2016, he was extradited to the US to face American federal charges. </s> New York (CNN) Drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzm á n Loera, who once headed a criminal enterprise that spanned continents and triggered waves of bloodshed throughout his native Mexico, was found guilty Tuesday of all 10 federal criminal counts against him.

The vast Brooklyn, New York, courtroom fell silent as the verdict was read. Jurors did not look at the defendant, who pocketed nearly $14 billion as the decadeslong head of the murderous Sinaloa cartel.

There was no visible reaction from Guzmán, whose conviction on the top charge of engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise carries a mandatory term of life in prison. He will be sentenced on June 25.

"It is a sentence of which there is no escape and no return, " US Attorney for the Eastern District Richard Donoghue said.

US District Judge Brian Cogan confirmed the verdicts with each of the eight women and four men on the jury, telling them later their conduct on the panel "made me very proud to be an American."

One of Guzmán's lawyers described him as "extremely upbeat" after the verdict.

"He's a fighter," defense attorney Michael Lambert said. "He's not done yet by far."

After jurors left the room, Guzmán waved and smiled at his wife, Emma Coronel, a former beauty queen and courtroom regular who smiled back and touched her hand to her heart.

"Good, thank you," she said in Spanish when asked how she felt after the verdict.

The partially sequestered and anonymous jury deliberated roughly 34 hours over six days.

Over 2½ months, they sat through testimony about unspeakable torture and ghastly murders, epic corruption at nearly every level of Mexico's government, narco-mistresses and naked subterranean escapes, gold-plated AK-47s and monogrammed, diamond-encrusted pistols.

"We are obviously disappointed with the jury's verdict in the trial of Joaquín Guzmán Loera but are respectful of the process and the jury's decision," defense attorney Eduardo Balarezo said. "We were faced with extraordinary and unprecedented obstacles in defending Joaquín. ..."

Another member of the defense team, Jeffrey Lichtman, said they waged a vigorous defense against an "avalanche" of evidence and cooperating witnesses. They plan to file an appeal on a number of issues.

"He was bringing our spirits up, which was surprising. Usually it's the other way around," Lichtman said of his client after the verdict. "He's always been a gentleman, always been supportive, always been happy and appreciative of all our efforts."

Donoghue said the case represented a victory for the American people, for Mexicans who had lost loved ones in drug wars, and for every family who has lost someone to drug addiction.

"There are those who say the war on drugs is not worth fighting. Those people are wrong," he said.

The case, Donoghue said, pulled back the curtain on international drug trafficking in a way no trial ever has, revealing the endemic corruption that allowed the Sinaloa cartel to operate.

"This is a day of reckoning, but there are more days of reckoning to come," he said.

Gold-plated AK-47s and diamond-encrusted pistols

Guzmán, 61, was convicted of 10 counts, including engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, conspiracy to launder narcotics proceeds, international distribution of cocaine, heroin, marijuana and other drugs, and use of firearms.

He faces a mandatory life sentence without the possibility of parole for leading a continuing criminal enterprise, and a sentence of up to life imprisonment on the remaining drug counts.

Federal prosecutors said they will seek a forfeiture judgment for billions of dollars constituting the cartel's illegal drug-trafficking proceeds.

The prosecution's case featured 200 hours of testimony from 56 witnesses. Fourteen of those witnesses -- mostly admitted drug traffickers and cartel associates -- cooperated with prosecutors in hopes of reducing their own prison sentences.

There were also surveillance photos, intercepted phone calls and text messages involving Guzmán, as well as exhibits of blingy firepower and bricks of cocaine that dropped with the force of potato sacks.

In contrast, defense attorneys called just one witness and focused on undermining the credibility of cooperating witnesses. Defense attorney Jeffrey Lichtman said these witnesses had "lied every day of their lives -- their miserable, selfish lives."

Guzmán, once listed on Forbes' Billionaires List, has long been a slippery and near-mythical figure. He escaped from a Mexican prison in 2001 in a laundry cart and again in 2015 through a tunnel. After he was recaptured in 2016, he was extradited to the US to face American federal charges.

The high-profile trial centered on the struggles and actions of El Chapo, who came from humble origins in the heart of Mexico's rugged three-state Golden Triangle to become its most infamous native son.

The 12-week proceedings were conducted in part during the partial government shutdown over funding for a border wall. It showed that such fortification would have failed to stop tons of drugs the cartel moved from Mexico to the United States via fishing boats, trains, tractor-trailers, radar-evading airplanes, passenger cars at legal ports of entry, submarines, oil tankers, cocaine-laden cans of jalapeños and cross-border tunnels.

It included stunning testimony of corruption at nearly every echelon of Mexico's government, from police and military commanders to local and state officials to former presidents who vehemently denied the allegations.

The courtroom drama drew celebrities and so-called narco-tourists attracted to the Latin American soap opera atmosphere of the proceedings. Guzmán appeared in a suit and tie each morning, delivering a wave and smile to Coronel in the second row.

Under El Chapo, the Sinaloa cartel smuggled narcotics to wholesale distributors in Arizona, Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York.

About noon Tuesday, the court learned there was a verdict.

Some court-watchers had suggested the longer jurors considered the case, the better the chances they would acquit Guzmán or hang on any of the 10 counts. Others said jurors seemed simply to be doing their due diligence, sifting through hundreds of hours of testimony.

Still, Guzmán's plainclothes visits to the courthouse and his interactions, however minimal, with his allies had lightened his mood these last months, defense attorney Michael Lambert said. It was in sharp contrast with solitary confinement, with little to no human interaction for as many as 23 hours a day.

"Once the trial started, he seemed a little happier, a little more engaged," he said. "Just sitting there in a suit without handcuffs on is a privilege in itself. It makes him feel human." </s> Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera, the Mexican drug lord who pocketed nearly $14 billion as the decadeslong head of the murderous Sinaloa cartel, was found guilty Tuesday of all 10 federal criminal counts against him, including the top charge of engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise.

There was no visible reaction from Guzmán, who faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison. After the jury left, he waved and smiled at his wife, Emma Coronel, a courtroom regular who smiled back and touched her hand to her heart.

“Good, thank you,” she said when asked how she felt after the verdict.

The jury of eight women and four men deliberated roughly 34 hours over six days.

“We are obviously disappointed with the jury’s verdict in the trial of Joaquín Guzmán Loera but are respectful of the process and the jury’s decision,” defense attorney Eduardo Balarezo said. “We were faced with extraordinary and unprecedented obstacles in defending Joaquín …”

Guzmán, 61, faced 10 counts, including engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, conspiracy to launder narcotics proceeds, international distribution of cocaine, heroin, marijuana and other drugs, and use of firearms.

Over two and a half months, the jury in federal court in Brooklyn heard testimony about unspeakable torture and ghastly murders, epic corruption at nearly every level of Mexico’s government, narco-mistresses and naked subterranean escapes, gold-plated AK-47s and monogrammed, diamond-encrusted pistols.

The prosecution’s case featured 200 hours of testimony from 56 witnesses. Fourteen of those witnesses — mostly admitted drug traffickers and cartel associates — cooperated with prosecutors in hopes of reducing their own prison sentences.

There were also surveillance photos, intercepted phone calls and text messages involving Guzmán, as well as exhibits of blingy firepower and bricks of cocaine that dropped with the force of potato sacks.

In contrast, defense attorneys called just one witness and focused on undermining the credibility of cooperating witnesses. Defense attorney Jeffrey Lichtman said these witnesses had “lied every day of their lives — their miserable, selfish lives.”

Guzmán, once listed on Forbes’ Billionaires List, has long been a slippery and near-mythical figure. He escaped from a Mexican prison in 2001 in a laundry cart and again in 2015 through a tunnel. After he was recaptured in 2016, he was extradited to the US to face American federal charges. </s> Three months ago, Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán began his trial in the United States on federal drug conspiracy. Today (Feb. 12) in Brooklyn, a jury decided the fate of the Mexican drug cartel kingpin. El Chapo has been found guilty of all 10 charges after six days of deliberations in federal court.

The prosecutors accused El Chapo of trafficking large amounts of drugs such as heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana into the United States as the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel.

All jurors, four men and eight women remained anonymous for their protection. When signing documents, they were to write their juror number instead of their name.

The trial had called over 50 key witnesses by the prosecution which all described Guzman's life along with the brutal murders, his journey in the secret tunnels and details on the plastic bananas filled with cocaine.

In 2015, Guzman escaped twice from Mexican prison with the most recent escape in 2015 where he was recaptured in 2016 and extradited to the United States in 2017.

Now the 61-year-old faces a possibility of life in prison. </s> A jury has found drug kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán guilty of drug trafficking, weapons charges and money laundering, a verdict that means he will face life in prison at his sentencing. The leader of Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel has been in American custody since early 2017.

The decision came Tuesday, February 12th, after nearly three months of testimony from a wide assortment of former associates and underlings of Guzmán, who walked jurors through more than 30 years of the drug lord’s career as a trafficker, describing smuggling routes, wars with rival cartels, bribery and a handful of brutal murders ordered, and in some case committed, by the defendant.

Guzmán, 61, was found guilty on all charges. The top count, which carries a life sentence, was running in a continuing criminal enterprise, a wide-ranging charge that includes conspiracy to traffick drugs and conspiracy to commit murder. Count two was for manufacture and distribution of cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and marijuana, while counts three through seven were for importation or distribution of cocaine. Count nine was for use of firearms, and count 10 was for laundering the vast profits the cartel made from drug trafficking.

The jury, consisting of seven women and five men, deliberated for 35 hours over five and a half days before returning with a verdict.

El Chapo remained stoic as Judge Brian M. Cogan read the jury’s verdict, and stared in the direction of the jury when Cogan, at the request of the defense team, quizzed each juror one by one if the all-count guilty verdict reflected their vote. One by one, they replied yes.

Before dismissing the jurors, Cogan thanked them for their service, and praised their dedication.

“In my 13 years as a judge, I have never seen a jury pay this kind of attention to detail,” Cogan said. “This makes me proud to be an American.”

As the jurors left the courtroom for the last time, Guzmán nodded several times to his wife, Emma Coronel Aispuro, who sat, as she had throughout the trial, in the second row of the gallery. With a smile, he gave her a thumbs up, and with a resolute look on his face, turned away as United States Marshals led him away.

Sentencing has been scheduled tentatively for June 25th, but there’s little mystery about Guzmán’s likely fate: he faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison, and will likely be moved to ADX Florence, a so-called “supermax” prison in Florence, Colorado that is currently home to the likes of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Guzmán’s sworn enemy Osiel Cárdenas Guillen, a former leader of the Zetas cartel, a bitter rival to El Chapo’s Sinaloa Cartel.

Speaking with reporters outside the federal courthouse in Downtown Brooklyn in a flurry of snow and freezing rain, defense attorney Jeffrey Lichtman said El Chapo and his lawyers were “devastated” by the verdict, but promised to appeal and pledged to “fight until our last breath.”

“Joaquín Guzmán, I understand what society thinks of him,” Lichtman said. “But it was an absolute honor to represent him.”

In a press conference held immediately following the guilty verdict, U.S. Attorney Richard P. Donaghue said the case was a victory.

“Today, Guzmán Loera has been held accountable for the tons of illegal narcotics he trafficked for more than two decades, the murders he ordered and committed, and the billions of dollars he reaped while causing incalculable pain and suffering to those devastated by his drugs,” Donaghue said.

As Donaghue spoke, Guzmán’s wife hustled out of the building, flanked by her lawyer and an escort of heavily armed law-enforcement agents. As reporters dashed away from Donaghue and swarmed Coronel, she and her entourage pushed through the crowd before she stepped into a waiting SUV. She said nothing.

The verdict brought to a close a marathon trial that has, since early November, turned the federal courthouse in Downtown Brooklyn into a virtual fortress, complete with rooftop snipers, bomb-sniffing dogs, armed patrols by at least three law-enforcement agencies, and even a team from the National Guard equipped with a Geiger counter designed to detect nuclear radiation.

The trial was often a media sensation, with dozens of reporters from across Latin America and the United States covering the proceedings closely enough to be on a first-name basis with court-security officers. It was also a tourist destination, drawing curious gawkers from around the world eager to line up outside the courthouse before dawn and go through two security checkpoints just to get a glimpse at the famous narco don.

In the final weeks of the trial, reporters and particularly hearty audience members could be seen huddling in the courthouse vestibule in the predawn dark, even on mornings where temperatures plunged close to zero. On the final two nights, sleeping bags appeared.

Two days after both sides presented their closing arguments, a series of disturbing allegations against Guzmán surfaced in a cache of recently unsealed documents, including accusations from one cooperating witness that El Chapo had drugged and raped girls as young as 13. But jurors never heard those accusations, as the prosecution had successfully lobbied for Judge Brian M. Cogan to preclude any discussion of them, deeming them prejudicial and “irrelevant” to the criminal case against the defendant.

Deliberations began Monday, February 4th, just after 1 p.m, after several hours of instruction on the charges from Judge Brian M. Cogan. Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrea Goldbarg, who delivered the prosecution’s closing argument in an all-day session on January 30th, implored jurors to see to it that Guzmán, notorious for two dramatic escapes from Mexican prisons, would never again evade justice for his crimes.

“Do not let him escape,” Goldbarg said Wednesday. “Hold him accountable for his crimes. Find him guilty on all counts.”

The defense’s closing arguments focused heavily on Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada García, 71, El Chapo’s former partner who is reputedly the current head of the Sinaloa Cartel, and who was a favorite target of the defense throughout the trial. Since November, El Chapo’s lawyers have repeatedly tried to identify Zambada as the sole leader of the cartel.

“El Mayo bribed everyone from local beat cops to presidents of Mexico, and every politician was made rich by Mayo,” Lichtman said in his closing monologue. “So everyone wants to catch the famous El Chapo, who couldn’t keep his mouth shut.”

“While the world focuses on this mythical Chapo figure, the world is not focusing on Mayo Zambada,” Lichtman told jurors in his opening statement on November 14th. “El Mayo is comfortable, evading capture his entire life.”

From the beginning, Guzmán faced an uphill battle. The evidence, spanning Guzman’s decades in the drug business, was staggering, and revealed many new details about the inner workings of the Sinaloa empire. It showed just how extensive its systematic bribery of law-enforcement officials in Mexico was, as well as details about Guzmán’s life and character. In particular, it shed light on the years he had spent in hiding between his 2001 escape from a Mexican prison and his capture in 2014.

The prosecution called 56 witnesses in total to testify against Guzmán, a majority of them current and former federal agents whose investigations had come into contact with Guzmán’s sprawling drug-trafficking network. But the heart of the government’s case were 14 cooperating witnesses, most of whom had worked closely with Guzmán at various stages in his career, and many of whom had already pleaded guilty to drug-trafficking charges and confessed to far more fearsome wrongdoing, including one Colombian narco who said he had personally ordered the deaths of about 150 people.

The witnesses provided a sketches of testimony that began to gel into a comprehensive portrait of Guzmán’s life and empire. Some, like the first cooperating witness, Jesus Reynaldo “El Rey” Zambada García — El Mayo’s brother — and early cartel lieutenant Miguel Ángel Martinez Martinez, described how El Chapo built and rebuilt his operations in Mexico.

Others, like the cartoonishly sinister Colombian trafficker Carlos “Chupeta” Ramírez Abadía, his face disfigured by several botched plastic surgeries, told jurors about Guzmán’s international connections.

As the trial progressed, witnesses began to describe a full portrait of Guzmán’s empire: the Colombian traffickers who supplied him cocaine, forking over 40 percent of the load in exchange for Guzmán’s reliable swiftness and sway with the Mexican authorities he had on the payroll; the henchmen and secretaries who witnessed El Chapo’s daily life on the lam in the years he spent hiding out in the mountains of Sinaloa; and the bit players, some well removed from Guzmán’s inner circle, who oversaw on-the-ground smuggling of drugs and weapons.

Some witnesses, like the Colombian trafficker Jorge Cifuentes, described several catastrophic errors made by Guzmán, which resulted in two massive cocaine seizures by authorities in Ecuador and revealed a fallibility on Guzmán’s part that clashed with his mythical image.

El Rey, along with his nephew Vicente Zambada Niebla — El Mayo’s son — described how Guzmán’s feuds with former allies turned into bloody wars that cost the cartel business and turned up the heat from authorities.

Others described his brutality. In by far the most gruesome testimony of the trial, cartel henchman Isaias Valdez Ríos described how El Chapo kidnapped, tortured and executed gunmen loyal to rival cartels. In once instance, after beating a pair of men belonging to the Zetas cartel within an inch of their lives, he shot them and ordered their bodies burned, Valdez said. Another time, Valdez said, he shot a man and buried him alive.

The stories told by these witnesses were often sensational, frequently shocking. Throughout the trial, defense attorneys Angel Eduardo Balarezo, William Purpura and Jeffrey Lichtman hammered away at the prosecution’s witnesses, picking at inconsistencies in their testimony and attacking their credibility — all but two of the cooperating witnesses were in federal custody and hoping for reduced sentences and special visas for them and their families to live in the United States.

But the government had more substantial evidence at their disposal.

In January, the turning point in the trial came when prosecutors revealed a huge cache of hard evidence showing Guzmán taking an active role in cartel operations: text messages and phone recordings in which he negotiated the price per kilo of drug shipments — including one with a representative of the FARC, the Colombian guerilla group — and discussing violence and bribery with his henchmen.

The bulk of the phone calls came thanks to Christian Rodriguez, a young Colombian tech whiz hired by the cartel in 2008 to set up an encrypted messaging network that would allow Guzmán to maintain real-time communications with his lieutenants even while tucked away in his mountain hideouts. Rodriguez did his job well at first, updating the cartel’s comms from Nextel push-to-talk phones to a system of Blackberrys outfitted with a secure network based on servers in Canada on which Guzmán and his underlings could, in theory, speak freely. Soon, Guzmán had another request: the increasingly paranoid El Chapo wanted to know what people were saying about him, so he had Rodriguez install FlexiSpy, a spyware program, on Blackberrys that Guzmán gave out to top aides, as well as to his wife and girlfriends. At one point, El Chapo even asked Rodriguez if he could install the program on computers in every internet cafe in Culiacán.

But Rodriguez didn’t have the stomach for narco life. After a close call with the Mexican military, in which Rodriguez, El Chapo and his security entourage spent three days trekking through the mountains while fleeing a search party, Rodriguez continued his work remotely, but said he was badly shaken. Then, in 2010, the FBI recorded him talking to an undercover informant posing as a Russian mobster. After confronting Rodriguez in Bogotá, FBI agents convinced Rodriguez to hand them the keys to the system, allowing agents to record hundreds of calls between cartel honchos discussing sensitive business.

Jurors heard Guzmán discussing the price per kilo of cocaine shipments. They heard him speaking with urging caution to a hitman named Cholo Iván, who was complaining about a crew of corrupt cops on the cartel payroll who weren’t keeping up their end of the bargain. (“You taught us to be like a wolf,” Cholo Iván reminded Guzmán.)

In series of text messages with a girlfriend who worked as an intermediary, he threw caution to the wind and asked if she was referring to cocaine or marijuana when her coded language was just a bit too obtuse.

The picture was clear: if the man on the tapes with the voice described by one agent as sing-songy” was indeed Guzmán, the recordings and texts showed a mafia leader with a close eye for detail who took an active role in the cartel’s day-to-day business.

Addressing jurors at the end of her final arguments, Goldbarg told jurors that put together, the witnesses and the intercepted communications formed a sprawling, comprehensive case showing decades of direct leadership in a vast criminal conspiracy.

“This was the defendant running his empire,” Goldbarg said. </s> NEW YORK — Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzmán Loera, the Mexican drug lord who pocketed nearly $14 billion as the decadeslong head of the murderous Sinaloa cartel, was found guilty Tuesday of all 10 federal criminal counts against him, including the top charge of engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise.

The vast Brooklyn courtroom fell silent as the verdict was read. There was no visible reaction from Guzmán, who faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison. He's due to be sentenced June 25.

US District Judge Brian Cogan confirmed the verdicts with each of the eight women and four men on the jury, telling them later their conduct on the panel "made me very proud to be an American."

After the jury left the room, Guzman waved and smiled at his wife, Emma Coronel, a former beauty queen and courtroom regular who smiled back and touched her hand to her heart.

"Good, thank you," she said when asked how she felt after the verdict.

The partially sequestered and anonymous jury deliberated roughly 34 hours over six days.

"We are obviously disappointed with the jury's verdict in the trial of Joaquín Guzmán Loera but are respectful of the process and the jury's decision," defense attorney Eduardo Balarezo said. "We were faced with extraordinary and unprecedented obstacles in defending Joaquín ..."

US Attorney for Eastern District of New York Richard Donoghue said the case represented a victory for the American people, for Mexican people who had lost loved ones in drug wars, and for every family who has lost someone to drug addiction.

"There are those who say the war on drugs is not worth fighting. Those people are wrong," he said.

The case, Donoghue said, pulled back the curtain on international drug trafficking in a way no trial ever has, revealing the endemic corruption that allowed the Sinaloa cartel to operate.

"This is a day of reckoning, but there are more days of reckoning to come," he said.

Guzmán, 61, faced 10 counts, including engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, conspiracy to launder narcotics proceeds, international distribution of cocaine, heroin, marijuana and other drugs, and use of firearms.

Over two and a half months, the jury heard testimony about unspeakable torture and ghastly murders, epic corruption at nearly every level of Mexico's government, narco-mistresses and naked subterranean escapes, gold-plated AK-47s and monogrammed, diamond-encrusted pistols.

The prosecution's case featured 200 hours of testimony from 56 witnesses. Fourteen of those witnesses -- mostly admitted drug traffickers and cartel associates -- cooperated with prosecutors in hopes of reducing their own prison sentences.

There were also surveillance photos, intercepted phone calls and text messages involving Guzmán, as well as exhibits of blingy firepower and bricks of cocaine that dropped with the force of potato sacks.

In contrast, defense attorneys called just one witness and focused on undermining the credibility of cooperating witnesses. Defense attorney Jeffrey Lichtman said these witnesses had "lied every day of their lives -- their miserable, selfish lives."

Guzmán, once listed on Forbes' Billionaires List, has long been a slippery and near-mythical figure. He escaped from a Mexican prison in 2001 in a laundry cart and again in 2015 through a tunnel. After he was recaptured in 2016, he was extradited to the US to face American federal charges. </s> MEXICAN drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman has been sentenced to life in prison plus 30 years.

Guzman, 62, was found guilty of 10 charges - including drug trafficking and money laundering - after an 11-week trial at federal court in New York which ended in February.

The world's most feared drugs kingpin famously tunnelled out of a jail cell in 2015 and fled to freedom on a makeshift motorbike.

He was later arrested and was extradited to the US in 2017.

Guzman's Sinaloa cartel was said to be the biggest supplier of drugs to the US and during the trial witnesses said he tortured his cartel's enemies.

Mexico has tried to bring Guzmán to justice before, but he has twice escaped from maximum security prisons in his homeland.

During his imprisonment in 2001, he enlisted the help of the prison guards to sneak him to safety — hiding in a laundry cart.

He famously escaped again in 2015, breaking out of Mexico’s most secure prison by motorbike via a mile-long tunnel and evading capture for six months.

What was the verdict of his trial?

On February 12 2019 El Chapo was found guilty of all counts against him.

He was sentenced to life behind bars on July 17, a humbling end for a drug lord notorious for his ability to kill, bribe or tunnel his way out of trouble.

A federal judge in Brooklyn handed down the sentence, five months after Guzman's conviction in an epic drug-trafficking case.

Prior to his sentencing, he complained about the conditions of his confinement and told the judge he was denied a fair trial.

He said: "I take advantage of the opportunity to say there was no justice here. My case was stained and you denied me a fair trial while the whole world was watching. The United States is no better than any other corrupt country."

The life sentence was the minimum he could face and the additional 30 years were for unlawful uses of firearms including machine guns.

He was also ordered to pay 10 billion pounds in forfeiture - money his drug-trafficking organization made distributing cocaine and other drugs around the US.

Brooklyn Federal Judge Brian Cogan told the former kingpin, who's nickname means "shorty": "We're here for sentencing. There's not much I have to say about that because Congress has mandated that I impose life plus 30 years' imprisonment. That's the law."



The cartel chief rose from poverty in rural Mexico and through the ranks of the country’s underworld. He was jailed for 20 years in Mexico on trafficking and bribery charges but cut his sentence short in 2001, escaping in a laundry cart.

The following years were spent moving from one mountain hideout to another - guarded by a private army.

Eventually recaptured and thrown in a maximum-security prison in 2014, Guzman pulled off his best-known escape a year later digging below the shower cubicle in his cell and escaping through a mile long tunnel just wide enough for the drug lord to ride away on a makeshift motorcycle which ran on rails.

Where will he now be held?

His chance of escaping again appear slim as he is expected to serve his sentence at notorious lock-up ADX Florence, America's highest security prison in Colorado.

Prosecutors described the prison as"tonnes of steel".

No one has escaped from the prison since it opened in 1994, and Guzman would join a long list of the most infamous of criminals and terrorists who call it home.

What impact will it have in Mexico?

The sentencing was headline news in Mexico, but it was seen as unlikely to make a ripple in terms of the country's politics, security or the unabated drug trade.

Mexican security analyst Alejandro Hope said Guzman's fate will have "no impact" on trafficking. In the wake of Guzman's arrest and extradition, alleged capo Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada is believed to have long-ago consolidated control of the Sinaloa cartel.

"El Chapo is now an old story," Hope said. </s> NEW YORK – Hey, Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán – you've just been convicted on criminal drug charges that have you facing life in prison. Where are you going now?

And an escape from U.S. authorities — like the two jailbreaks in his native Mexico that made the Sinaloa drug cartel leader internationally notorious — seems far-fetched.

Nonetheless, the 61-year old drug lord's days in a courtroom aren't over.

U.S. District Court Judge Brian Cogan on Tuesday set a tentative June 25 sentencing date for Guzmán.

The timetable could change. The sentencing could mean one more middle-of-the-night trip from Manhattan to Brooklyn, across a closed-down Brooklyn Bridge with a heavily fortified police escort and helicopters following above.

A federal jury on Tuesday found Guzmán guilty of all 10 criminal counts against him, including drug trafficking, weapons violations and operating a continuing criminal enterprise. The last charge carries a sentence of up to life in prison.

His legal team immediately vowed to appeal the conviction. Defense lawyers plan to argue in part that they were improperly limited in their cross-examination of the 14 former cartel associates who testified against the former boss.

They also plan to challenge legal issues surrounding Guzmán's extradition from Mexico to stand trial in the U.S.

The appeal would be filed in the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals after Guzmán's sentencing. Appeals can take months to resolve.

Defense attorney Jeffrey Lichtman said Guzmán remained optimistic about his future.

More: Federal jury finds drug lord Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán guilty of all counts

Prosecutors presented a mountain of evidence that showed Guzmán oversaw the shipment of tons of cocaine and other drugs into the United States, generating billions of dollars in profits for the cartel.

The case covered virtually all facets of Guzmán's criminal career. But he's still a defendant in similar federal indictments in Florida, Texas and elsewhere.

Although it seems unlikely that those cases will now go forward, federal officials pointedly declined to take questions about Tuesday's verdicts because the other prosecutions remain open.

The prospect of where Guzmán would serve his sentence might undo at least some of the upbeat resolve touted by his defense team.

More: El Chapo lawyer says accusers lied to jury, and prosecutors let them

Federal officials haven't publicly discussed prison plans for Guzmán. But one possibility within the U.S. Bureau of Prisons system is the so-called Supermax, the U.S. penitentiary in Florence, Colorado.

It's the highest-security prison in the nation. It's the current home of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev; Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, the organizer of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; and Theodore Kaczynski – the Unabomber. </s> Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman will be rest of his life behind bars. A judge sentenced the drug lord to life in prison plus 30 years in federal court in Brooklyn, New York on Wednesday.

Related: UPDATE: Got To Be Kidding: El Chapo Just Went For The Three-Peat

He has also been ordered to pay $12.6 billion in forfeiture. Guzman, 62, was convicted in February by a jury of all 10 counts he faced, including engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise and drug trafficking charges, among others.

Prosecutors have called him a “ruthless and bloodthirsty leader” of the Sinaloa cartel and are seeking a life sentence. Witnesses during the trial testified that Guzman ordered and sometimes took part in the torture and murder of perceived cartel enemies.

Mexican Drug Lord El Chapo Sentenced to Life Behind Bars was originally published on wolbbaltimore.com
At his trial in a Brooklyn federal court, Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán is found guilty on all 10 counts; the charges include engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, conspiracy to launder narcotics proceeds, international distribution of cocaine, heroin, marijuana and other drugs, and use of firearms during the commission of a felony.