Top Drug Lord Escapes Mexican Prison 2nd Time
MEXICO CITY (AP) — The capture of drug lord Joaquin Guzman was the crowning achievement of President Enrique Pena Nieto's government in its war against drug cartels, a beacon of success amid domestic woes. That makes the bold escape by "El Chapo" from a maximum security prison all the more devastating.
Widely considered the world's richest and most powerful drug trafficker before his capture last year, Guzman slipped down a shaft from his prison cell's shower area late Saturday and disappeared into a sophisticated mile-long (1.5 kilometer-long) tunnel with ventilation, lighting and a motorcycle apparently used to move dirt.
"All the accolades that Mexico has received in their counter-drug efforts will be erased by this one event" if Guzman is not recaptured, said Michael S. Vigil, a retired U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration chief of international operations.
More than anything else, the escape undermined Mexico's assertion it can deal with top drug lords at home and doesn't need to extradite them to the U.S. The national pride that appeared to motivate Pena Nieto's administration to prosecute drug lords like Guzman through its own court system has now turned into a national embarrassment.
"This is regrettable, very bad, because it without doubt affects the image of Mexico in the world," Mexican Sen. Luis Miguel Barbosa told journalists in Paris on Monday. He was part of a delegation traveling with the Mexican president to the French capital.
According to a report from the Congressional Research Service in May, extraditions from Mexico to the U.S. peaked at 115 in 2012, the last year of Pena Nieto's predecessor, Felipe Calderon. There were 66 last year.
The escape route apparently was built over the last year right under authorities' noses into a supposedly escape-proof lockup. Its scale has raised suspicions of corruption that could most discourage the U.S., Mexico's main ally that has poured more than $1 billion into joint efforts at battling organized crime cartels, much of it focused on reforming the criminal justice system.
The United States was already stinging from a court decision in August 2013 to free drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero on procedural grounds, overturning his conviction in the 1985 kidnapping, torture and murder of DEA agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena. Caro Quintero hasn't been seen in public since then.
"For the most-wanted criminal to escape from the highest-security prison is going to create conflicts, the first of them with the United States," Mexican security expert Jorge Chabat said Sunday.
The escape also hurt Pena
Nieto domestically. He had campaigned on one main promise — to diminish
drug cartel violence — and had claimed success in attacking drug gang
capos like no administration before, arresting or killing essentially
all the top leadership of the Zetas, Beltran Leyva and Knights Templar
cartels.
It was a highlight
for an administration struggling on other fronts, including a lackluster
economy and scandals over the disappearance of 43 college students, and
the purchase by the president's wife of a mansion, known as the "white
house," from a government contractor.
"This
hurts him a lot. It is an administration that already has a lot of
image problems, with the scandals over the students and the 'white
house,' and now this comes along and paints them as an administration
with serious problems of inefficiency and corruption," Chabat said.
Pena Nieto said in a televised interview that allowing him to escape again would be "unforgiveable." Jesus Murillo Karam, his attorney general at the time, said the possibility of another Guzman escape "does not exist."
"International pressure is the check and balance against the state's corrupt powers," Ballbe said.
The
bold and well-engineered escape also illustrates that simply capturing
such a powerful figure without dismantling his financial network is
insufficient, he said.
"Holding
a drug lord inside the country does not affect his financial capacity,"
Ballbe said. "It is very difficult for the state to do something
against the size of the bribes that these networks can produce."
U.S.
Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch said in a statement that "we share
the government of Mexico's concern regarding the escape of Joaquin
Guzman," adding that "the U.S. government stands ready to work with our
Mexican partners to provide any assistance that may help support his
swift recapture."
But Peter Bensinger, a
former administrator of the DEA, said he expects that U.S. officials
have expressed their anger to their Mexican counterparts.
"He
ought to have been housed in an American prison," Bensinger said.
"Mexican authorities will come in for tremendous criticism, as they
should."
Raul Benitez, a
security expert at Mexico's National Autonomous University, said
Guzman's second escape is even worse for Pena Nieto than if he had never
captured him.
"In the context of the drug war it is the president's worst failure," Benitez said.
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Associated
Press writers Mark Stevenson in Mexico City, Maria Verza in Almoloya,
Mexico, Michael Tarm in Chicago, Maggy Donaldson in Paris and Jorge
Sainz in Madrid contributed to this report.