- Drug lord Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman '
To this day no one knows why El Chapo was taken by police to motel room ...Marines, aware of what may be occurring, quickly arrived to arrest him
"'El Chapo' failed in a roadside bribery attempt"'
- Mexico Police
Mexican drug lord Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman was taken to a run-down sex motel by the federal officers who caught him so they could negotiate a bribe for his release, it has been claimed.
Guzman had been picked up by the officers after carrying out two carjackings
during a desperate attempt to flee Mexican marines who had raided his
hideout hours earlier.
But
to this day, it remains unclear why the federal police officers - who
were well aware of his notoriety - took him to the motel instead of
jail.
A U.S.
official has claimed Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman was taken to the hotel
room (pictured left) after being picked up as he fled marines (right) to
undergo bribery negotiations
Peter Vincent (pictured), an advisor
for the Justice Department and Homeland Security, said El Chapo would
have tried to bribe the police officers, failing which he would have
threatened to kill their them
Now a U.S. official who worked as an advisor to the Justice Department and Homeland Security has told 60 Minutes the powerful crime boss was likely trying to negotiate his way out of the scrape.
Peter
Vincent worked for the institutes during the hunt for El Chapo, which
ended with his capture on January 8, six months after he escaped from a
maximum security prison.
He said: 'El Chapo undoubtedly said: "One, you let me go now and I will make you wealthier beyond your wild imaginations.
"If
you should choose to decline my most generous offer I am not only going
to kill you but I am going to rape and kill your wife and your
daughters and I'm going to torture your sons".'
Mr
Vincent added: 'He has behaved like that virtually his entire criminal
career. Luckily the Mexican marines showed up, realized what was going
on and took control of the situation.'
Mexico's Federal Police have previously claimed El Chapo tried to bribe officers at the roadside when they first picked him up.
Saying no to his offers of riches, they said they took him to the motel in order to wait for the Marine taskforce to arrive.
Mexican
marines captured El Chapo, which means 'the short one' in Spanish,
during a raid in the town of Los Mochis, located in the kingpin's home
state of Sinaloa on January 8.
Five
cartel gangsters were killed and another six were arrested in the raid,
while one Mexican marine sustained non-life-threatening injuries.
A vast arsenal of weapons was seized, including rocket launchers, machine guns and armored vehicles.
El Chapo had earlier escaped from a nearby house which came under fire from marines as the net closed on the cartel leader.
He,
along with one of his key lieutenants, fled down a drain, where they
spent several hours underground before emerging through a manhole on a
busy street in the early morning.
They
then carjacked two different motorists, before they were picked up by
Federal Police after the second vehicle broke down. It was then they
were taken to the motel.
Meanwhile,
lawyers for El Chapo say he has complained guards at Mexico's Altiplano
prison won't let him sleep, and that plans to make a movie about his
life with actress Kate del Castillo are still on.
Guzman's
lawyer, Jose Refugio Rodriguez, said drug lord still wants the movie to
be made but that the El Chapo himself won't contribute money to it.
Rodriguez said: 'He wants it to be done.
'I
know that Kate is Mr. Joaquin Guzman's representative... she is
authorized to do it,' he said. 'And he told me Monday that the movie has
to go forward.'
Rodriguez said Guzman's involvement would be to authorize the use of his name and story.
At
an impromptu news conference outside the prison, another of his lawyers
said guards waken him every two hours at night, and the practice is
equivalent to torture.
El Chapo is forced to face the press as he is paraded before journalists and bundled into a helicopter following his arrest
Mexican Marines storm the house where El Chapo was hiding out in the early hours of January 8
Several cartel members were killed or
arrested in the ensuing shootout, while several hours later officials
finally managed to arrest the world's most wanted drug lord, El Chapo
'He
said: "What I want is for them to let me sleep. They are making me into a
zombie".' Juan Pablo Badillo quoted Guzman as saying.
Badillo compared Guzman's treatment to that of prisoners at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
'This is the same torture they applied to prisoners of war there in Guantanamo," he said.
Rodriguez
released a copy of Guzman's testimony in one of the cases against him,
in which the jailed drug lord accuses prison authorities of torturing
him and said he felt 'like a sleepwalker'.
'My head and my ears always hurt and I feel bad all over,' Guzman said in the document.
But
the testimony also sheds light on the relatively permissive visitors'
schedule Guzman enjoyed at the maximum-security prison before his escape
in July, which has now been reduced.
Guzman
said he had been give an hour-and-a-half every day to talk to his
lawyer, an hour in the sun in a prison patio, and a four-hour conjugal
visit and a four-hour family visit every nine days.
That
regimen of visits - few of which would occur in a U.S. top-security
prison - may explain why Guzman's lawyers are working so hard to prevent
his extradition.
Badillo
said that lawyers had filed a total of nine constitutional appeals on
Guzman's behalf against extradition, restrictions on visits and other
alleged violations.
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