El Chapo Faces Array of Drug Charges in United States
By ERIC LICHTBLAUJAN. 10, 2016
WASHINGTON — Back in 1995, a federal grand jury in San Diego charged a little-known Mexican drug trafficker named Joaquín Guzmán Loera and 22 underlings with creating a cocaine ring that stretched from Southern California to New Jersey.
Over the next two decades, as Mr. Guzmán’s infamy grew and he became known simply by his nickname — El Chapo, or “Shorty” — the American authorities would charge him seven more times in courtrooms in Brooklyn, Chicago, Miami and other cities where his sprawling drug network had wreaked havoc.
Prosecutors argued that his network moved hundreds of thousands of pounds of cocaine — worth billions of dollars — onto American streets.
But despite multiple requests by the United States for Mexico to extradite him, the elusive fugitive still has never set foot in an American courtroom.
With his capture in Mexico, however, that may change, as the Mexican authorities signaled more strongly than ever this weekend that they might be willing to send him to the United States to face drug charges after his prison escape last summer. That escape humiliated the Mexican authorities and raised questions about whether his incarceration there could be guaranteed.
Still, American officials were not yet booking a plane ticket for the accused cartel leader.
The White House would say nothing on Saturday about Mr. Guzmán’s possible extradition, and Justice Department officials, while expressing hope, said the drug lord’s extradition was far from certain.
“Is it possible? Yes,” said one Justice Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive international deliberations. “But I have not heard anything definitive.”
Others who have tracked Mr. Guzmán for years were more optimistic.
Michael Braun, who oversaw numerous investigations of Mr. Guzmán as the head of operations at the Drug Enforcement Administration until his retirement in 2008, said he was confident that the infamous drug trafficker would soon be sent to the United States. After Mr. Guzmán’s escape last summer, Mexico “simply can’t afford another embarrassing situation,” he said. “They’ve got to get rid of this guy as quickly as they can.”
He said that if Guzmán were sent stateside to face criminal charges, it would be a coup for American prosecutors — and a huge setback for the Mexican drug trade.
“It’s a very big deal,” Mr. Braun said.
Indeed, the possibility of extradition sets up the prospect of one of the biggest federal trials in the United States in recent years. Mr. Guzmán would join a rogue’s gallery of drug and mob figures who have stoodtrial in an American courtroom. Among them, Al Capone, convicted of tax evasion in Chicago in 1931; Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, the former dictator of Panama convicted on drug and racketeering charges in Miami in 1992; and James Bulger, known as Whitey, convicted of murder and racketeering in Boston in 2013.
For Mexico to agree to extradite Mr. Guzmán, the United States would most likely have to agree not to prosecute him on capital charges that could subject him to the death penalty. Mexico does not have a death penalty and, as a matter of policy, does not extradite defendants who could face it in another country.
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With charges brought in numerous jurisdictions in the United States, another key question is where Mr. Guzmán would be tried. One possibility, officials said, would be to try him in the eastern district of New York in Brooklyn — not only because he was indicted there, but also because Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch was the United States attorney when the charges were brought.
And she would be the one to ultimately decide where he would be tried.
Initial charges in Brooklyn against Mr. Guzmán and several associates were brought in 2009. More recently, when Ms. Lynch was in charge of the office, prosecutors in Brooklyn consolidated the charges against him with another pending case in Florida.
Their joint indictment charged Mr. Guzmán and another suspected leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, Ismael Zambada García, with distributing more than 500 tons of cocaine in the United States since the late 1980s. It also charged them with distribution of heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana.
Prosecutors believe the cartel may have been the biggest supplier of cocaine to the New York City area for a decade or longer.
In their most recent indictment of Mr. Guzmán and Mr. García, prosecutors listed 163 separate counts of distribution of cocaine in the United States, ranging from 234 kilograms to as much as 23,000 kilos.
The indictment also said that leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel conspired to kill or arrange the killings of several people, including Mexican police and military officers and elected officials. They also conspired to have members of competing drug trafficking organizations killed, the indictment said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/11/world/americas/extradition-of-el-chapo-to-us-is-neither-certain-nor-simple.html?_r=0
