MEXICAN drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman has been sentenced to life in prison plus 30 years.

Guzman, 62, was found guilty of 10 charges - including drug trafficking and money laundering - after an 11-week trial at federal court in New York which ended in February.

The world's most feared drugs kingpin famously tunnelled out of a jail cell in 2015 and fled to freedom on a makeshift motorbike.

He was later arrested and was extradited to the US in 2017.

Guzman's Sinaloa cartel was said to be the biggest supplier of drugs to the US and during the trial witnesses said he tortured his cartel's enemies.

Mexico has tried to bring Guzmán to justice before, but he has twice escaped from maximum security prisons in his homeland.

During his imprisonment in 2001, he enlisted the help of the prison guards to sneak him to safety — hiding in a laundry cart.

He famously escaped again in 2015, breaking out of Mexico’s most secure prison by motorbike via a mile-long tunnel and evading capture for six months.

What was the verdict of his trial?

On February 12 2019 El Chapo was found guilty of all counts against him.

He was sentenced to life behind bars on July 17, a humbling end for a drug lord notorious for his ability to kill, bribe or tunnel his way out of trouble.

A federal judge in Brooklyn handed down the sentence, five months after Guzman's conviction in an epic drug-trafficking case.

Prior to his sentencing, he complained about the conditions of his confinement and told the judge he was denied a fair trial.

He said: "I take advantage of the opportunity to say there was no justice here. My case was stained and you denied me a fair trial while the whole world was watching. The United States is no better than any other corrupt country."

The life sentence was the minimum he could face and the additional 30 years were for unlawful uses of firearms including machine guns.

He was also ordered to pay 10 billion pounds in forfeiture - money his drug-trafficking organization made distributing cocaine and other drugs around the US.

Brooklyn Federal Judge Brian Cogan told the former kingpin, who's nickname means "shorty": "We're here for sentencing. There's not much I have to say about that because Congress has mandated that I impose life plus 30 years' imprisonment. That's the law."



The cartel chief rose from poverty in rural Mexico and through the ranks of the country’s underworld. He was jailed for 20 years in Mexico on trafficking and bribery charges but cut his sentence short in 2001, escaping in a laundry cart.

The following years were spent moving from one mountain hideout to another - guarded by a private army.

Eventually recaptured and thrown in a maximum-security prison in 2014, Guzman pulled off his best-known escape a year later digging below the shower cubicle in his cell and escaping through a mile long tunnel just wide enough for the drug lord to ride away on a makeshift motorcycle which ran on rails.

Where will he now be held?

His chance of escaping again appear slim as he is expected to serve his sentence at notorious lock-up ADX Florence, America's highest security prison in Colorado.

Prosecutors described the prison as"tonnes of steel".

No one has escaped from the prison since it opened in 1994, and Guzman would join a long list of the most infamous of criminals and terrorists who call it home.

What impact will it have in Mexico?

The sentencing was headline news in Mexico, but it was seen as unlikely to make a ripple in terms of the country's politics, security or the unabated drug trade.

Mexican security analyst Alejandro Hope said Guzman's fate will have "no impact" on trafficking. In the wake of Guzman's arrest and extradition, alleged capo Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada is believed to have long-ago consolidated control of the Sinaloa cartel.

"El Chapo is now an old story," Hope said. </s> NEW YORK – Hey, Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán – you've just been convicted on criminal drug charges that have you facing life in prison. Where are you going now?

And an escape from U.S. authorities — like the two jailbreaks in his native Mexico that made the Sinaloa drug cartel leader internationally notorious — seems far-fetched.

Nonetheless, the 61-year old drug lord's days in a courtroom aren't over.

U.S. District Court Judge Brian Cogan on Tuesday set a tentative June 25 sentencing date for Guzmán.

The timetable could change. The sentencing could mean one more middle-of-the-night trip from Manhattan to Brooklyn, across a closed-down Brooklyn Bridge with a heavily fortified police escort and helicopters following above.

A federal jury on Tuesday found Guzmán guilty of all 10 criminal counts against him, including drug trafficking, weapons violations and operating a continuing criminal enterprise. The last charge carries a sentence of up to life in prison.

His legal team immediately vowed to appeal the conviction. Defense lawyers plan to argue in part that they were improperly limited in their cross-examination of the 14 former cartel associates who testified against the former boss.

They also plan to challenge legal issues surrounding Guzmán's extradition from Mexico to stand trial in the U.S.

The appeal would be filed in the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals after Guzmán's sentencing. Appeals can take months to resolve.

Defense attorney Jeffrey Lichtman said Guzmán remained optimistic about his future.

More: Federal jury finds drug lord Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán guilty of all counts

Prosecutors presented a mountain of evidence that showed Guzmán oversaw the shipment of tons of cocaine and other drugs into the United States, generating billions of dollars in profits for the cartel.

The case covered virtually all facets of Guzmán's criminal career. But he's still a defendant in similar federal indictments in Florida, Texas and elsewhere.

Although it seems unlikely that those cases will now go forward, federal officials pointedly declined to take questions about Tuesday's verdicts because the other prosecutions remain open.

The prospect of where Guzmán would serve his sentence might undo at least some of the upbeat resolve touted by his defense team.

More: El Chapo lawyer says accusers lied to jury, and prosecutors let them

Federal officials haven't publicly discussed prison plans for Guzmán. But one possibility within the U.S. Bureau of Prisons system is the so-called Supermax, the U.S. penitentiary in Florence, Colorado.

It's the highest-security prison in the nation. It's the current home of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev; Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, the organizer of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; and Theodore Kaczynski – the Unabomber. </s> Guzmán, who was convicted on 10 charges in February, said he believed his trial was unfair.

Drug Lord Joaquín Guzmán, known as “El Chapo” and for his prison escapes and his role as a drug kingpin, will spend the rest of his life behind bars, a federal court in New York ruled Monday.

Before his sentencing by U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan, who presided over the trial, Guzmán said he believed his trial was unfair, per The Washington Post.

“When extradited, I expected to have a fair trial where justice was blind and my fame would not be a factor, but what happened was actually the opposite,” he said. “The government of the United States will send me to a prison where my name will never be heard again. I will take this opportunity to say there was no justice here.”

In addition to his prison sentence, which includes life plus 30 years, the drug lord is expected to forfeit his $12.6 million fortune, CNN reported.

The trial lasted three months and included details of Guzmán’s rise to power.

According to The Washington Post, the prosecution presented a case that detailed gruesome murders and the trafficking of drugs including marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin across the border from Mexico into the United States.

Prosecution presented its case with testimony from 14 witnesses and one million messages sent between alleged members of Guzmán’s cartel.

Guzmán’s attorneys argued that he was merely a scapegoat for those who testified against him. A jury took six days to decide to convict Guzmaán on all 10 charges.

For its protection the jury in the case has been kept anonymous, although one juror anonymously spoke with VICE News and said that at least five jurors violated a judge’s orders by watching or reading news coverage about the trial while it was ongoing.

Guzmán is planning to appeal the sentence, though will likely not be present at those proceedings. Attorney Mariel Colon said that Wednesday’s court appearance might be the last time the public sees ‘El Chapo,’ per CNN. She also noted it might be the last time his wife sees him, as she is not permitted to visit or speak to him on the phone.

As CNN notes, Guzmán is only permitted to speak to a few select family members on the phone from prison, which include his two daughters but not his wife.

The 61-year-old was found guilty in February on all 10 counts he was accused including engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise and drug trafficking charges. The first charge has a mandatory life in prison sentence, per CNN.

Guzmán, who has previously escaped from two maximum security prisons in Mexico, is expected to serve at a Supermax prison in Colorado. </s> A United States judge on Wednesday sentenced Mexican drug lord Joaquín Guzman alias El Chapo to life in prison plus 30 years, BBC reported. A New York court found Guzmán, 62, guilty of 10 charges, including drug trafficking and money laundering.

The additional 30 years have been given for illegal use of firearms. The judge also ordered Guzman to pay a fine of $12.6 billion (Rs 86,749 crore).

A jury had in February found Guzman guilty of smuggling cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana into the United States, as well as using firearms and conspiracy to launder narcotics proceeds. Mexico had extradited Guzmán to the United States in January 2017. His trial began in November 2018.

At present, Chapo is being held in solitary confinement in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan, The Guardian reported. US District Judge Brian Cogan last month rejected Chapo’s request for more time to exercise on the jail’s roof, as prosecutors said this might lead to his escape.

Guzman said before Wednesday’s verdict that his solitary confinement had amounted to “psychological, emotional, mental torture 24 hours a day”. He also alleged that he had been given an unfair trial. “It’s been torture, the most inhumane situation I have lived in my entire life,” he said, according to CNN. “There was no justice here.”

“The long road that led ‘El Chapo’ Guzman from the mountains of Sinaloa to the courthouse was paved with death, drugs and destruction, but it ended today with justice,” Assistant Attorney General Brian A Benczkowski said. Defence lawyer Jeffrey Lichtman said it was very likely that Guzman would be imprisoned in a high-security prison in Colorado. </s> Joaquin Guzman Loera, also known as 'El Chapo' is transported to Maximum Security Prison of El Altiplano in Mexico City, Mexico on January 08, 2016.

The Mexican drug lord known as "El Chapo" was sentenced Wednesday to life in prison plus thirty years at a hearing where he accused the U.S. government of corruption and of torturing him during his confinement.

El Chapo, whose real name is Joaquin Guzman Loera, also was ordered to forfeit $12.6 billion during his sentencing in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, New York.

Judge Brian Cogan, who cited what he called Guzman's "overwhelming evil" in announcing the mandated sentence, will determine later how much he must pay in restitution.

The kingpin, who had twice escaped maximum security prisons in Mexico, was convicted earlier this year of presiding over a vast criminal operation, the Sinaloa Cartel, which funneled immense quantities of narcotics, including heroin and methamphetamine, into the United States.

Guzman did not testify during the three-month trial, but broke his silence Wednesday.

He claimed, in a tear-choked statement, that he had been denied justice during his trial and confinement in New York City.

"Since the government will send me to a jail where my name will not ever be heard again, I take this opportunity to say: There was no justice here," El Chapo told Cogan, according to the New York Daily News.

"I drink unsanitary water, no air or sunlight, and the air pumped in makes my ears and throat hurt. In order to sleep, I put toilet paper in my ears. My wife had not been allowed to visit, and I can't hug my daughters," he said, according to NBC News. "This has been psychological, emotional and mental torture 24 hours a day."

"My case was stained and you denied me a fair trial when the world was watching. What happened here is the U.S. is not better than any other corrupt country," Guzman added.

Guzman spoke in Spanish. His comments were translated by one of his lawyers.

The defense indicated to Cogan that they plan to appeal on the grounds of juror misconduct, according to Vice News, which was at the hearing.

A juror told that news outlet in February that jurors violated the judge's orders barring them from following the case in the media.

"What occurred here was not justice. How we treat our most reviled is a measuring stick for our own society," defense attorney Jeffrey Lichtman said, according to NBC News.

But prosecutors said that Guzman was "uniquely deserving" of the harsh sentence.

"There were countless victims of his orders to kill," prosecutor Gina Parlovecchio said. "He has shown no remorse."

One of Guzman's alleged victims, Andrea Velez Fernandez, spoke at the sentencig.

"Today I come here a miracle of god," Velez Fernandez said. "Mr. Guzman used me as bait to kidnap someone in Ecuador. He offered one million dollars to Hells Angels to end my life. Fortunately I found out and escaped with the help of the FBI. </s> A US judge has sentenced Mexican drug kingpin Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán to life in prison plus 30 years.

Guzmán, 62, was found guilty of 10 charges, including drug trafficking and money laundering, by a federal court in New York in February.

He escaped a Mexican jail through a tunnel in 2016, but was later arrested. He was extradited to the US in 2017.

He is a former head of the Sinaloa cartel, which officials say was the biggest supplier of drugs to the US.

During the trial, witnesses said he had tortured his cartel's enemies.

Speaking through an interpreter just before Wednesday's sentencing, Guzmán said in the Brooklyn courtroom his confinement in the US had amounted to "psychological, emotional, mental torture 24 hours a day".

He also said he had received an unfair trial, accusing jurors of misconduct. </s> Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman will be rest of his life behind bars. A judge sentenced the drug lord to life in prison plus 30 years in federal court in Brooklyn, New York on Wednesday.

Related: UPDATE: Got To Be Kidding: El Chapo Just Went For The Three-Peat

He has also been ordered to pay $12.6 billion in forfeiture. Guzman, 62, was convicted in February by a jury of all 10 counts he faced, including engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise and drug trafficking charges, among others.

Prosecutors have called him a “ruthless and bloodthirsty leader” of the Sinaloa cartel and are seeking a life sentence. Witnesses during the trial testified that Guzman ordered and sometimes took part in the torture and murder of perceived cartel enemies.

Mexican Drug Lord El Chapo Sentenced to Life Behind Bars was originally published on wolbbaltimore.com </s> A federal judge in Brooklyn, N.Y., has sentenced drug kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán to a term of life in prison without the possibility of parole plus 30 years for his role in leading Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel. A life sentence was mandatory; U.S. prosecutors had asked that three decades be added onto Guzmán’s punishment.

One of the only suspenseful questions that remained Wednesday was whether Guzmán, who did not speak during his long trial, would speak in court in what’s expected to be his last public appearance before heading to the Supermax prison in Florence, Colo.

“Guzmán told U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan before he was sentenced Wednesday that he was denied a fair trial,” The Associated Press reports. AP added, “He said Cogan failed to thoroughly investigate claims of juror misconduct in the case.”

Guzmán, 62, was extradited from his native Mexico to the U.S. in January 2017. The terms of his extradition included a pledge that U.S. authorities would not seek the death penalty.

“Mr. Guzmán thought for more than 25 years that he was untouchable, that there was no problem affecting the Sinaloa cartel that he couldn’t bribe, intimidate, torture or kill his way out of,” Assistant Attorney General Brian Benczkowski said.

Guzmán’s punishment, Benczkowski said, “brings a measure of justice” to people in both the U.S. and Mexico who have been affected by his crimes.

U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida Ariana Fajardo Orshan said the life sentence was the only option for “somebody who has spent a lifetime poisoning the streets of our communities.”

A federal jury convicted Guzmán in February, finding him guilty of a raft of serious charges, from drug crimes to a murder conspiracy. His conviction included 10 counts of crimes such as narcotics trafficking, using a firearm in drug crimes and money laundering.

At Wednesday’s sentencing, Guzmán’s attorneys reiterated their call for a new trial, asking for a hearing to go over their allegations of jury misconduct.

“This case was simply an inquisition. It was a show trial, and how it ended is exactly perfect for that description,” defense attorney Jeffrey Lichtman said. He said the government’s witnesses had included “lunatics and sociopaths and psychopaths” and that “up to five jurors broke the law — violated the law while they were judging Mr. Guzmán for crimes.”

After Guzmán was convicted, his defense team said the trial was tainted, claiming that members of the jury had ignored the judge’s orders not to read about the trial outside of court proceedings.

“I’m not here to tell you that Joaquín Guzmán is a saint,” he said, speaking to journalists outside the courthouse. “All we asked for was fairness. And no matter what you think of Joaquín Guzmán, he still deserves a fair trial.”

The U.S. sentence was announced 18 years after President George W. Bush formally declared Guzmán a drug lord, imposing U.S. sanctions on him under the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Act.

The drug kingpin has repeatedly made headlines during his criminal career — first for the vast power he ruthlessly amassed and later for his seeming ability to break out of any prison in Mexico. In 2015, he escaped from a maximum security prison for the second time, after spending more than a decade eluding Mexican authorities. He lived outside the law for an additional six months, before he was captured in a high-profile operation in early 2016.

Wednesday’s sentencing took place amid heightened security. In addition to a police contingent, helmeted soldiers stood guard on the sidewalk outside the doors of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, holding automatic rifles and wearing camouflage.

Guzmán’s lucrative and extensive criminal network extended well beyond Mexico’s borders. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration says his Sinaloa cartel put an exceptionally potent methamphetamine into illegal drug markets in “virtually every corner of Colorado, Utah, Montana, and Wyoming.” During his trial, prosecutors presented evidence that Guzmán sent methamphetamine to numerous U.S. locations, from Los Angeles to Minneapolis and from Ohio to Tucson, Ariz.

The agency also said the cartel supplied cocaine and fentanyl in the U.S. “through sophisticated and efficient transportation and distribution networks.”

To elude detection, Guzmán paid $1 million to an information technology engineer to set up what authorities called an encrypted communications network to operate his global drug-trafficking operation. By using encrypted cellphones and encrypted apps, prosecutors said, the drug lord could communicate freely with his partners in Colombia, Ecuador, Canada and the U.S.

As his cartel did billions of dollars in business, Guzmán rose to become a pop-culture figure in Mexico, where his visage frequently appears on T-shirts and graffiti. In his poverty-stricken home town of Badiraguanto in northwest Mexico, many locals viewed him as a benefactor who sometimes helped them. But elsewhere in his country, he’s viewed as a key figure in a devastating string of drug wars and violence. When the criminal mastermind slipped away from Mexican custody in 2015, he was quickly featured in dozens of narcocorrido songs — ballads about the drug business.

Fueled by drug profits and a growth strategy that relied on brutality and sicario hitmen, Guzmán’s godfather-like stature rose above international borders. As The Associated Press reported in 2015:

Days after Guzmán was found guilty in a New York courtroom, U.S. authorities unsealed new criminal indictments against two of his sons in Mexico. Joaquín Guzmán Lopez and Ovidio Guzmán Lopez were charged with conspiracy to import and distribute cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana into the United States. </s> NEW YORK – Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán Loera is set to face the music Wednesday, learning the sentence for his February conviction as a notorious drug lord who was a leader of Mexico's Sinaloa narcotics cartel.

And the tune for the 62-year-old convict who was extradited to the United States from Mexico for trial is expected to be downbeat – life behind bars.

The outcome likely won't surprise a man who, in the testimony of a onetime lieutenant, had a favorite song called Un Puño de Tierra – A Fistful of Dirt. The corrido, or ballad, advises listeners to live one's life intensely because when death comes, all that's left is dust and clay.

U.S. District Court Judge Brian Cogan is expected to impose the sentence amid bomb-sniffing dogs, automatic rifle-toting agents and other extra security measures at the Brooklyn federal courthouse for all of Guzmán's appearances.

The line to get into the proceeding started forming around 7 p.m on Tuesday. By dawn on Wednesday, more than 50 media representatives and spectators lined the sidewalk outside the courthouse.

Guzmán, who did not testify in his own defense during the trial, may or may not speak during the sentencing.

In a sentencing letter filed last week, prosecutors reiterated that life behind bars is the mandatory punishment for one of the crimes on which a federal jury found Guzmán guilty five months ago. They also revealed that at least one person would give a victim impact statement.

Defense lawyers have signaled that they plan to appeal the conviction, as well as Cogan's recent denial of a motion for an evidentiary hearing and new trial based on potential evidence of jury misconduct.

Guzmán is best known as a former leader of Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel who gained fame by twice breaking out of high-security prisons in his native country – but hasn't managed to pull off a similar feat in the U.S.

Depending on U.S. Bureau of Prisons decisions, he could be sent to the so-called Alcatraz of the Rockies, the "administrative maximum" prison in Florence, Colorado. There he would join, but likely never meet, fellow inmates such as Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui and Oklahoma City bombing accomplice Terry Nichols.

Guzmán's nearly 12-week trial ended in February with a jury of eight women and four men finding the defendant guilty on all counts during the sixth day of deliberations.

The charges against Guzmán included drug trafficking and weapons counts stemming from his leadership role in the cartel's smuggling tons of cocaine and other drugs into major U.S. cities during a criminal career that stretched for decades.

Although his nickname means shortie in Mexican Spanish, Guzmán has long been a larger-than-life narcotrafficante whose persona has been featured in web TV, online and other media productions. Fittingly, his sentence was large, too.

The guilty verdict on the charge he engaged in a continuing criminal enterprise mandated a life prison term because of the jury's separate guilty votes on three sentencing enhancements.

In a legal quirk, Guzmán's conviction for unlawful use of a machine gun in tandem with the drug crimes means he also faces a mandatory but likely unnecessary 30-year sentence that must run consecutively with the life term.

The sentencing seemingly marks an official end of Guzmán's reign as one of the world's most notorious drug lords, though his more than two years in solitary confinement in U.S. jails before the conviction had already removed him from the narcotics trafficking fray.

By many accounts, however, the Sinaloa cartel continues to thrive as it competes with other international drug trafficking organizations and diversifies into other businesses.

Guzmán's trial unfolded like a must-see telenovela as millions of readers and viewers followed the developments through traditional and online media, and scores trekked to the Brooklyn courthouse in the middle of the night in hope of landing one of the few available seats in the courtroom.

There was the grisly, like the testimony by a drug underling who told jurors Guzmán interrogated, tortured and shot enemies, even ordering one badly injured man buried alive.

There was the comic, as a former mistress testified how she and a naked Guzmán escaped a Mexican authorities raid on a Culiacán safe house by ducking into a shaft hidden beneath a bathtub and then fleeing through a water tunnel.

There was business news, as former Guzmán lieutenants and co-conspirators recounted how he oversaw secret tunneling along the Mexico-U.S. border that outpaced competitors in speeding cocaine to Los Angeles, Chicago, New York and other cities.

And there were tech developments, too, as government witnesses testified that the drug lord dubbed "El Rapido" used cars, trucks, trains, planes, fishing boats and even submarines for the long-distance drug smuggling from clandestine production labs in Colombia, through Mexico, and on to the U.S.
Mexican drug lord Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán is sentenced to life in prison plus thirty years, and is ordered to forfeit US$12.6 billion. He accused the U.S. government of "torture and corruption" during his sentencing hearing in the U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, New York. He will likely be sent to ADX Florence in Colorado to serve his sentence.