A group of inmates offered to help Mexican drug lord Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman escape prison in a video they filmed inside a California correctional facility.
A group of five men, using sunglasses, hats and clothes to conceal their faces, pledged their support to Guzman and bragged about their control over the prison believed to be in Taft, California. Guzman, who is accused of running one of the world's biggest drug-trafficking operations, was extradited from Mexico to New York last week to stand trial. Speaking in Spanish, the five men announced their intentions and said: 'We want to tell the people this: If you bring 'el señor' here and if 'el señor' asks us to free him, we are going to take him out immediately.'
They bragged about having access to women, cell phones and drugs, and said they had control of the entire prison.
The group's leader 'Chucky' also said he had 'bought' the guards at the prison.
He told the leader of the Sinaloa drug cartel: 'Everything is ready for you. What you say is the law. Here you have more than 3,500 soldiers.'
The man seemed certain the drug lord would end up at the facility, but that remains unclear, since Guzman is wanted in six states and faces charges in a number of different judicial districts.
Federal Bureau of Prisons spokesperson Jill Tyson told the LA times'Upon learning of the video, BOP oversight staff on-site at the facility began working with the contractor to investigate the allegations of irregularities at the facility.
The low to minimum security prison in Taft is the only facility run by a private corporation in California, according to the bureau's website. Guzman arrived in a small jet at Long Island's MacArthur Airport on January 19, having traveled from a prison in the northern state of Chihuahua, where his cartel rules.
Guzman pleaded not guilty to charges that he ran the world's largest drug-trafficking organization during a decades-long criminal career.
The indictment in Brooklyn, which includes 17 criminal counts, carries a mandatory minimum sentence of life in prison, Robert Capers, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said at a news conference last week.
U.S. prosecutors gave assurances to Mexican officials that they would not seek the death penalty in order to secure his extradition, since Mexico opposes capital punishment.
As leader of the notorious Sinaloa cartel, Guzman oversaw perhaps the world's largest transnational cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine smuggling operation. The cartel played a key role in Mexico's decade-long drug war that has killed more than 100,000 people.
El Chapo was captured a year ago after he had fled a high-security penitentiary in central Mexico through a mile-long tunnel in his second dramatic prison escape.
He is now being held in Manhattan's Metropolitan Correctional Center, MCC, where 9/11 terrorist Ramzi Yousef, crime boss John Gotti and fraudster Bernie Madoff, were all once jailed.
'I assure you, no tunnel will be built leading to his bathroom,' Special Agent In Charge Angel Melendez of U.S. Homeland Security Investigations said at a news conference. Located just south of Chinatown, and built in 1975, the jail has slit-shaped windows with frosted glass to prevent prisoners from getting even a glance at the city below.
A tunnel leads to the adjacent federal courthouse which means inmates can be transported to and from their trial without ever seeing the sun.
The jail is sandwiched between federal prosecutors' offices and two federal courthouses and is protected by steel barricades that can stop a 7 1/2-ton truck. Cameras capable of reading a newspaper a block away are trained on the area.
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