- Title: MEXICO-GUZMAN/ESCAPE Mexico drug kingpin 'Chapo' Guzman escapes prison in tunnel
- Date: 12th July 2015
- Summary: ALMOLOYA DE JUAREZ, STATE OF MEXICO, MEXICO (JULY 12, 2015) (REUTERS) ***WARNING CONTAINS FLASH PHOTOGRAPHY*** ALTIPLANO PRISON WHERE JOAQUIN "EL CHAPO" GUZMAN WAS BEING HELD VARIOUS OF SOLDIER IN TANK OUTSIDE PRISON MEXICO CITY, MEXICO (JULY 12, 2015) (REUTERS) WIDE OF NEWS CONFERENCE (SOUNDBITE) (Spanish) NATIONAL SECURITY COMMISSIONER, MONTE ALEJANDRO RUBIDO, SAYING: "T
- Embargoed: 27th July 2015 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Mexico
- Country: Mexico
- Topics: General
- Reuters ID: LVA72O9K3S3L7H7GIDB8CCTGWLT2
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: Mexico's most notorious drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman escaped from high security prison through a tunnel built under his cell, the government said, his second jailbreak in 15 years and a major embarrassment for President Enrique Pena Nieto.
"There was an escape at the Federal Social Re-adaptation Centre Number One: Altiplano, of Joaquin Guzman Loera, who was located in the special treatment area, hallway number 2, room 20. Up to then, the day had passed in a normal way. As a matter of fact, at 8 p.m., he had been given his daily dose of medicine," National Security Commissioner Monte Alejandro Rubido told a news conference on Sunday.
The kingpin slipped out of the prison through a tunnel more than 1.5 km (1 mile) long which led to a building site in the local town.
Guzman, who bribed his way out of prison during a previous escape in 2001, was seen on video entering his shower area at 8.52 p.m. on Saturday (0152 GMT Sunday), then disappeared, the National Security Commission (CNS) said.
Beneath a 50 cm by 50 cm gap in the shower area, guards found a ladder going down some 10 meters into the tunnel, which was about 1.7 meters high and 70-80 centimetres wide.
"The escape alert was activated and, because of that, staff at the federal centre did a search of the cell and found the mouth of a tunnel in it. This began with a rectangular hole approximately 50x50 centimetres and a metre and a half deep in the shower area. This hole is connected to a vertical pipe approximately 10 metres deep that had been enabled with a ladder. Through that, one reaches a tunnel approximately 1.7 metres high and 70 to 80 centimetres wide which extends for a currently undetermined length but which, in a straight line, from point to point, is over 1500 metres," he added.
The drug lord, who is also wanted by U.S. prosecutors and once made it on to Forbes' list of billionaires, was gone by the time guards entered his cell in the Altiplano prison in central Mexico and found it empty, the commission said.
Prison workers were quickly detained over the escape.
Rubido said 18 officials from the penitentiary had been taken in for interrogation at the unit of the Attorney General's office specializing in organized crime.
"At this time, 18 individuals from different areas of the prison are being transferred to Mexico City for questioning at the SEIDO (Deputy Prosecutor's Office for Organized Crime Investigation) offices," he said.
Security services called a meeting of their top officials, ordered a massive manhunt for El Chapo, or "Shorty", and shut down the airport in the nearby city of Toluca.
The flight of Guzman, whose exploits made him a legendary figure in villages scattered in the sierra where he grew up in northwestern Mexico, seriously undermines Pena Nieto's pledge to bring order to a country racked by years of gang violence.
The breakout occurred in the State of Mexico, the home state of Pena Nieto, who took office in 2012 vowing to confront the cartels who have killed more than 100,000 people since 2007.
Before his election victory, politicians in Pena Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) mocked their conservative rivals for letting Guzman escape while they ran the country, saying it would not have happened on their watch.
When news of Guzman's getaway broke, the Mexican president was en route to France, where he has just landed.
Guzman became one of the world's top crime bosses, running the powerful Sinaloa Cartel, which smuggled billions of dollars worth of cocaine, marijuana and methamphetamines into the United States and fought vicious turf wars with other Mexican gangs.
In 2001, Guzman paid guards to help him slip out of the high security Puente Grande prison near the city of Guadalajara following a previous arrest in 1993.
After eluding capture for 13 years, he was arrested in February 2014 in his home state of Sinaloa.
Government officials vowed Guzman would be recaptured, and security forces fanned out to search roads near the prison some 90 km (60 miles) west of the capital. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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