Breaking News: Fugitive drug kingpin El Chapo recaptured - Mexico president #Trump

President tweets ‘We’ve got him’ six months after notorious drug cartel leader Joaquín Guzmán made elaborate escape from maximum-security prison


Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán is escorted by soldiers after a previous capture in February 2014.

Mexico’s president has announced the recapture of cartel kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán whose escape in July from a maximum-security prison – the second in less than 15 years – humiliated the country’s federal government and exposed corruption in the country’s prison system.
President Enrique Peña Nieto made the announcement on Twitter, saying: “Mission accomplished: we’ve got him. I would like to inform the Mexican people that Joaquín Guzmán Loera has been captured.”

The Mexican Navy said in a statement that saying Guzmán, the head of the powerful Sinaloa cartel, was captured after a shootout with marines in the early morning hours in the city of Los Mochis, in Guzmán’s home state of Sinaloa.
The shootout claimed five lives, though only one marine was injured, while weapons, a rocket launcher and bulletproof vehicles were captured.

The capture marks the second time Guzmán has been apprehended in the last three years. Mexican marines apprehended him in Mazatlán in early 2013 after a series of near misses.
But in July last year, he made a daring escape from Altiplano prison, 56 miles outside Mexico City, squeezing through a hole in his shower floor then fleeing through a mile-long tunnel on a modified motorbike mounted on a rail.


At the time of his escape the capo wore a tracker bracelet and was under round-the-clock surveillance, but cameras inside his cell had two blind spots in the shower and toilet because of human rights requirements.
CCTV footage released in October showed that guards failed to intervene even though loud hammering was audible from Guzmán’s cell.
The grainy footage showed that Guzmán turned up the volume on a television by his bed to drown out the noise as his helpers hammered a hole through the floor under the shower.

The Mexican government offered a reward of 60m pesos ($3.8m) for information leading to the drug lord’s recapture, but the escape was extremely embarrassing for Peña Nieto, who had previously said Guzmán’s escape would be, “Unforgivable.”

The president and federal officials were criticized for not extraditing Guzmán to the United States, in spite of shortcomings in the Mexican prison system.
It was the second time Guzmán had fled custody: in 2001 he escaped from another maximum-security prison, Puente Grande in western Jalisco state, reputedly hidden in a laundry cart.

Analysts say the capture gives the president a chance to regain some creditability after taking a political hit.
“If confirmed it’s obviously a great sign that in spite of concerns that Pena Nieto’s government would go easy on kingpins and organized crime, it hasn’t,” said Malcolm Beith, a journalist who wrote a biography of Guzmán. “Catching Chapo again now gives Mexico a great opportunity to either try him quickly and fairly and make sure that if found guilty he remains behind bars – or extradite him and prove that US-Mexican relations are just as strong as ever.”