Did El Chapo Escape
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Drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman has been recaptured seven months after he escaped from prison, Mexican authorities announced Friday.
But this isn’t the first time El Chapo, leader of the Sinaloa cartel, has been on the lam. The drug kingpin has a long history of capture, escape and recapture.
Here are some major dates in Guzman’s timeline (with some information from the Associated Press):
- June 10, 1993: Mexico announces Guzman’s first capture in Guatemala. But even after Guzman was imprisoned, “He continued to manage his affairs from prison with scarcely a hitch,” writes Robert Saviano in his book ZeroZeroZero. “The maximum security prison Puente Grande, where he was transferred in 1995, became his new base of operations,”
- Jan. 19, 2001: With the help of bribed guards, Guzman escapes from his top-security prison. Saviano describes the escape: “One of them—Francisco Camberos Rivera, known as El Chito, or the Silent One—opened the door to El Chapo’s cell and helped him climb into a cart of dirty laundry. They headed down unguarded hallways and through wide-open electronic doors to the inner parking lot, where only one guard was on duty. El Chapo jumped out of the cart and leaped into the trunk of a Chevrolet Monte Carlo.”
- Drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, known for repeatedly escaping from Mexican prisons, is now at a federal prison in Florence considered escape-proof, where ultra-violent prisoners once beat.
- Famously, El Chapo has escaped twice from Mexican high-security prisons: Once in 2001, in a cart of dirty laundry, and most recently in July 2015, using a mile-long tunnel that led directly to his.
Compiling information on the methods likely used by those digging the tunnel that Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel leader Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman escaped prison through, this detailed infographic presents the tools and costs of the operation. For the second time in 15 years Mexico’s most infamous drug lord escaped from a maximum-security prison.
- Feb. 22, 2014: El Chapo is captured in Mazatlan after hiding in tunnels for days. The success was touted as a huge win for authorities, who by then had deemed Guzman the “most powerful drug trafficker in the world.”
- July 11, 2015: Guzman escapes through a tunnel from Mexico’s top-security prison. You can see the path he took to escape here.
- Jan. 8, 2016: He is once again re-captured in Los Mochis, Sinaloa after a shootout with Mexican marines. Five people were killed and one marine was wounded in the fight.