A US judge has sentenced Mexican drug kingpin Joaqu\u00edn “El Chapo” Guzm\u00e1n to life in prison plus 30 years.<\/p>\n
Guzm\u00e1n, 62, was found guilty of 10 charges, including drug trafficking and money laundering, by a federal court in New York in February.<\/p>\n
He escaped a Mexican jail through a tunnel in 2015, but was later arrested. He was extradited to the US in 2017.<\/p>\n
He is a former head of the Sinaloa cartel, which officials say was the biggest supplier of drugs to the US.<\/p>\n
During the trial, witnesses said he had tortured his cartel’s enemies.<\/p>\n
Speaking through an interpreter just before Wednesday’s sentencing, Guzm\u00e1n said in the Brooklyn courtroom his confinement in the US had amounted to “psychological, emotional, mental torture 24 hours a day”.<\/p>\n
He also said he had received an unfair trial, accusing jurors of misconduct.<\/p>\n
The life sentence was the minimum Guzm\u00e1n faced. The additional 30 years were for unlawful uses of firearms.<\/p>\n
He was also ordered to pay $12.6bn (\u00a310bn) in forfeiture.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors said Guzm\u00e1n would be serving his sentence behind “tonnes of steel”, referring to a high-security prison in Colorado.<\/p>\n
It was not immediately clear if Guzm\u00e1n would appeal against the verdict.<\/p>\n
“El Chapo” (or “Shorty”) ran the cartel in northern Mexico.<\/p>\n
In 2009, Guzm\u00e1n entered Forbes’ list of the world’s richest men at number 701, with an estimated worth of $1bn.<\/p>\n
He was accused of helping bring hundreds of tonnes of cocaine into the US and of conspiring to make and distribute heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana.<\/p>\n
He was also said to have used hitmen to carry out hundreds of murders, assaults, kidnappings and acts of torture.<\/p>\n
Key associates, including one former lieutenant, testified against Guzm\u00e1n.<\/p>\n
It provided shocking revelations about the drug lord’s life.<\/p>\n
Court papers accused him of having girls as young as 13 drugged before raping them.<\/p>\n
Guzm\u00e1n “called the youngest of the girls his ‘vitamins’ because he believed that sexual activity with young girls gave him ‘life'”, said Colombian drug trafficker Alex Cifuentes, a former associate.<\/p>\n
Another witness described seeing Guzm\u00e1n murder at least three men.<\/p>\n
Former bodyguard Isaias Valdez Rios said Guzm\u00e1n beat two people who had joined a rival cartel until they were “completely like rag dolls”. He then shot them in the head and ordered their bodies be thrown on a fire.<\/p>\n
In another incident, he had a member of the rival Arellano Felix cartel burned and imprisoned before taking him to a graveyard, shooting him and having him buried alive.<\/p>\n
Guzm\u00e1n is also alleged to have had his own cousin killed for lying about being out of town, and ordered a hit on the brother of another cartel leader because he did not shake his hand.<\/p>\n
The court heard details of his 2015 escape from Mexico’s maximum-security Altiplano prison. His sons bought a property near the prison and a GPS watch smuggled into the prison gave diggers his exact location.<\/p>\n
At one point Guzm\u00e1n complained that he could hear the digging from his cell. He escaped by riding a specially adapted small motorcycle through the tunnel.<\/p>\n
He also used software on his phone to spy on his wife and mistresses, which allowed the FBI to present his text messages in court.<\/p>\n
In one set of texts, he recounted to his wife how he had fled a villa during a raid by US and Mexican officials, before asking her to bring him new clothes, shoes and black moustache dye.<\/p>\n
Guzm\u00e1n is the highest profile Mexican drug cartel boss so far to stand trial in the US.<\/p>\n
The drug war in Mexico – pitting the Mexican and US authorities against cartels smuggling drugs into the US and the cartels against each other – has killed about 100,000 people over more than a decade.<\/p>\n
Guzm\u00e1n achieved notoriety for twice escaping custody in Mexico as well as avoiding arrest on numerous other occasions.<\/p>\n
Among some in his home state,\u00a0he had the status of a folk hero<\/a>, a popular subject of “narcocorridos” – musical tributes to drugs barons.<\/p>\n In 2016, he gave an interview to Hollywood actor Sean Penn in a Mexican jungle following his escape the previous year and boasted that he was the world’s leading supplier of heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana.<\/p>\n He was later recaptured in the north-western town of Los Mochis. During the raid he fled through a drain but was later caught by troops in a shootout.<\/p>\n The US indictment against him was a consolidation of charges from six federal jurisdictions across the country, including New York, Chicago and Miami.<\/p>\n Prosecutors pooled together evidence acquired over more than a decade, including from international partners such as Mexico and Colombia, to build their sweeping case.<\/p>\n The trial jurors were anonymous and were escorted to and from the courthouse in Brooklyn by armed marshals after prosecutors argued that Guzm\u00e1n had a history of intimidating witnesses and even ordering their murders.<\/p>\n Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n