Thursday, October 22, 2015

Mexico jails prison officials over drug lord escape

Mexico jails prison officials over drug lord escape
http://www.presstv.com/Detail/2015/09/19/429829/Mexico-drug-lord-Joaquin-El-Chapo-Guzman-
Sat Sep 19, 2015 9:34AM

Two Federal Police officers stand next to a patrol car with a picture of fugitive drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman earlier this year. AFP photo

Mexico has jailed at least 13 prison officials over the escape of notorious drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.

The drug kingpin broke out of a maximum security prison in July.

Leonor Garcia, formerly in charge of El Altiplano, the maximum security prison that Guzman fled, was one of those imprisoned on Friday, Mexican authorities told AFP.

Celina Oseguera, the former national coordinator of the federal prison system, was also incarcerated.

Both of them, Oseguera and Garcia, were being held at the female prison in Tepic, in the western state of Nayarit.

It was being reported that the other eleven prison officials were all guards and personnel at El Altiplano, and now they will all be serving time as inmates of that prison.

The imprisonments came after a judge in the capital Mexico City issued orders to arrest the suspects allegedly involved in the disappearance of "El Chapo."

The drug kingpin escaped from prison through a tunnel dug in his cell. The tunnel, 1.5 kilometers (one mile) long, was dug in his shower area, and footage shows Guzman walking in before disappearing from sight and going underground.

Guzman is the leader of the Sinaloa drug cartel, which smuggles huge amounts of illegal drugs into the United States. He busted out of another maximum security penitentiary in 2001.

Thirteen years later he was caught in Mazatlan, a tourist resort on the Pacific coast in the state of Sinaloa.

The Mexican government is still looking for the drug lord and a $3.8 million reward is being offered for his arrest.

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