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Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, the Mexican drug addiction official found guilty of leading a deadly criminal enterprise that smuggled tons of drugs into the United States in three decades, was sentenced Wednesday by a US judge to spend the rest of his days in prison.
Judge Brian Cogan of the US District imposed the sentence of life imprisonment plus 30 years, which was mandatory under the law, at a hearing held in federal court in Brooklyn.
Guzmán, 62, was convicted by a jury in February of trafficking tons of cocaine, heroin and marijuana and multiple murder plots as a leader of the long-known Sinaloa cartel. as one of the largest and most violent drug trafficking organizations in Mexico.
In his judgment, Judge Cogan stated that the "immense evil" of the crimes committed by Guzmán had been clearly highlighted during the 12 weeks of trial.
Raymond Donovan, the Drug Enforcement Agency's (DEA) officer in charge of capturing and extraditing the king's pillar, said that Guzmán's conviction and conviction represented "justice not only for the Mexican government, but for all. the victims of Guzmán in Mexico ".
Guzmán, who did not testify in his defense, also went to court, expressing himself in public for the first time since his conviction, though via a lawyer.
"Since the United States government will send me to a prison where my name will never be heard again, I take the opportunity to say that there was no justice." here, "he told the court through his lawyer before sentencing.
Guzmán, who has often filed complaints about the conditions of his detention, said that his imprisonment at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan District was "an act of torture".
"I was forced to drink unsafe water. I have forbidden access to the fresh air and the sun. The only sunlight that I have in my cell goes through the air vent, "he said.
"To sleep, I have to plug my ears with toilet paper because of the air from the vent pipe," he complains. "My wife has not been allowed to visit me so far, I have not been allowed to hug my daughters.
"I have been physically, psychologically and mentally tortured 24 hours a day."
In a separate statement, the attorney who represented her at the trial described the sentence of three decades as "a joke" that "testifies to the corruption of the criminal justice system" compared to the 17-year-old sentence pronounced against Vicente Zambada, rival trafficker who cooperated with the government.
"The conviction of Joaquín and his incarceration for drug trafficking will not change the so-called war on drugs," said Balarezo. "Sing like a canary, true or false, and reduce your pain. As long as you do what the government wants you to do, everything will be fine.
Experts say that since the criminal has twice escaped from maximum security prisons in Mexico and the Sinaloa cartel, the US government will likely demand that the smuggler suffer his sentence in the federal government's "Supermax" prison in Florence, Colorado, also called ADX for "administrative maximum".
The facility is so secure, so remote and so austere that it has been dubbed the "Alcatraz of the Rockies". The institution housed an international crime virtuoso, including the British "shoe bomber" Richard Reid, the 1993 World Trade Center bomber Omar Abdel-Rahman, and the so-called Unabomber Ted Kaczynski.
But Guzmán's cases with prosecutors are not over yet. The government estimates that despite the seizure of nearly 200,000 kg of cocaine from Sinaloa, Guzmán has ambaded an estimated $ 14 billion worth of fortune between the 1980s and his arrest in 2014 for his bulk smuggling operation. .
In a report tabled last month, the US government accurately quantified the amount it wanted to collect from a drug dealer, whose tastes, like smugglers before him, went up to four times. women, four planes, a yacht, several beach houses, a gun-plated, jewel-encrusted and a private menagerie containing lions, tigers, panthers and deer that he might visit "in a little train" . The figure? $ 12,666 191,701.00.
Guzmán, nicknamed "Shorty" during his three decades of smuggling career, has forged a reputation for character similar to that of Robin Hood, which made him a folk hero in his country, Sinaloa, where he was born in a poor mountain village.
Before being finally captured in 2016, Guzmán escaped twice from Mexico's maximum security prisons. He was extradited to the United States for trial in January 2017.
Guzmán made his name as a trafficker in the 1980s by digging tunnels under the US-Mexico border, which allowed him to smuggle the drug faster than any of his rivals . He accumulated power in the 1990s and 2000s during bloody wars with his rivals, eventually becoming the most well-known leader of the Sinaloa cartel.
His 12-week trial, which had gathered testimony from more than a dozen former Guzmán badociates who had signed cooperation agreements with prosecutors, gave the public an unprecedented look at the internal functioning of the cartel. .
The witnesses, including some of Guzmán's most important lieutenants, a communications engineer and a long-time mistress, explained how he set up a sophisticated organization reminiscent of a multinational.
He sent drugs north with fleets of aircraft and boats, as well as detailed accounting records and an encrypted electronic communication system running on secret computer servers in Canada, witnesses said.
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