{{In a US-backed raid early on Saturday, Mexican marines captured the country’s most powerful drug kingpin in a resort city in his home state of Sinaloa. Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman had eluded capture for 13 years.}}
The arrest is a major victory for President Enrique Pena Nieto, whose administration is striving to tame a surge in drug violence that has killed more than 77,000 people in the past seven years.
The man whose nickname means “shorty” headed Mexico’s most powerful drug gang, the Sinaloa cartel, whose empire stretches along the Pacific coast and smuggles drugs to the United States, Europe and Asia.
Hours after his capture, the 56-year-old drug lord was taken to Mexico City’s airport, where he was paraded in front of television cameras, wearing a white shirt and jeans and sporting thick black hair and a matching mustache.
He was flanked by two masked marines who held him by the arms and the back of the neck before hauling him inside a federal police helicopter, which flew him to a maximum-security prison.
US Attorney General Eric Holder hailed the arrest as “a landmark achievement, and a victory for the citizens of both Mexico and the United States”.
The United States had offered a $5 million reward for information leading to the arrest of Guzman, who is accused of being behind much of the drug violence that has plagued Mexico for years.
Mexico’s Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam said “nobody was hurt” in the arrest, which was the result of months of collaborative work with US law enforcement agencies and led to 13 arrests as well as the seizure of more than 100 weapons.
The authorities had tracked Guzman down in Culiacan, Sinaloa state’s largest city, and came close to capturing him between February 13-17 in one of the seven homes he was using.
But Guzman managed to escape through specially built tunnels that were linked to the city’s drainage systems as security forces struggled to break down a steel-reinforced door, Murillo Karam said.
Guzman was eventually detained with an unidentified associate in Mazatlan.
A US security official said Mexican forces had acted on intelligence from the US Drug Enforcement Administration and the Department of Homeland Security.
france24
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