Joaquin Guzman of his real name had been sentenced to life in 2019 for his role at the head of the Sinaloa cartel. He considers having been “deprived of the right to assistance of a lawyer”.
Le Monde
“El Chapo” requires a new trial. Sentenced in 2019 in New York to life to perpetuity for his role at the head of the Sinaloa cartel, the Mexican drug trafficker Joaquin Guzman – El Chapo is his nickname – asked the American justice the cancellation of his conviction.
arguing that he was “deprived of the right to assistance of a lawyer”, Mr. Guzman also claims “the holding of a new trial or the programming of a hearing of witnesses”, according to a judicial document that He signed on September 6 and made public by a court in mid-October.
El Chapo accuses his lawyer at the time of having been “ineffective” in his legal assistance by not asking for a prior analysis of the documents provided by Mexico to support a request for American extradition. Mexican authorities thus made it possible to be tried in Brooklyn and not in Texas or California as it was stipulated in the extradition request, according to Joaquin Guzman.
This omission has prejudiced Mr. Guzman and prevented him from presenting an adequate file to contest the extradition conditions, according to the document, which alleges that El Chapo would have been deprived of a “fair trial” .
A first call rejected
Considered in his time as the most powerful drug trafficker, Joaquin Guzman was found guilty in July 2019 of a vast drug trafficking between Mexico and the United States, as well as illegal use of a firearm and money laundering. He was sentenced to life, accompanied by a symbolic sentence of an additional thirty years of prison for the use of automatic weapons.
m. Guzman had already appealed his conviction, but his request had been rejected and his sentence confirmed in January by the Federal Prosecutor of Brooklyn, in New York.
El Chapo, 65, known for his spectacular escape from a Mexican prison by a tunnel in 2015, is detained in the high security prison of Florence, in Colorado (west of the United States).
His wife, Emma Coronel Aispuro, was sentenced at the end of November 2021 by an American federal judge to three years in prison after admitting her participation in the traffic of the Sinaloa cartel. She was arrested in February 2021 at Washington Airport.