This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/02/el-chapo-wants-extradition-to-us-after-mexican-guards-deny-sleep-says-lawyer

The article has changed 5 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 0 Version 1
El Chapo wants extradition to US after Mexican guards deny sleep, says lawyer El Chapo wants extradition to US after Mexican guards deny sleep, says lawyer
(about 3 hours later)
A lawyer for drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman has said his client now wants to be extradited as soon as possible to the United States because guards at a Mexican maximum-security prison won’t let him sleep. Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán wants to accelerate his extradition to the United States, saying he can no longer tolerate the conditions in the prison he escaped from in July 2015, but was returned to in early January.
Lawyer Jose Refugio Rodríguez said Guzmán told him to negotiate with US authorities for a lighter sentence and confinement at a medium-security prison. José Refugio Rodríguez, a lawyer for the drug lord, told Mexican media on Wednesday that his client had instructed him to broker a deal with US officials in exchange for better prison conditions in a medium-security facility and a lighter sentence – though, at 61, it is likely the head of the Sinaloa Cartel will still live out his life behind bars.
Rodriguez told Radio Formula on Wednesday he talked to Guzmán on Tuesday at the Altiplano prison west of Mexico City. “I spoke with him and he asked me, he pleaded with me to look for the quickest way possible of processing extradition because he can no longer stand the situation he’s experiencing,” said Rodríguez in comments published by the newspaper Reforma.
“He has reached the limit,” Rodríguez said. “It is an act of desperation.” The request for rapid extradition is a reversal for Guzmán, whose lawyers have filed a string of applications for injunctions known as “amparos” which would prevent him from being sent abroad. Guzmán’s two previous escapes – from a Guadalajara prison in 2001, when he was wheeled out in a laundry cart, and last July through a tunnel measuring more than a mile long – were both hastened by a fear of extraditions.
“He said to try to get a negotiation with the American government,” Rodriguez said, adding, “We know of agreements with other people for confinement in medium-security prisons ... a much lower sentence.” Mexico’s attorney general’s office released a statement in January saying the extradition process was underway, but have warned that it could take up to a year.
The US embassy in Mexico City said it does not comment on extraditions. Guzmán has found prison life unbearable since being placed under a strict new security regime, Rodríguez said, adding that his client is unable to sleep as prison guards wake Guzmán every few hours to ensure he hasn’t escaped again.
Guzmán’s lawyers had previously vowed to fight extradition as long as possible, and Mexican officials had acknowledged it would take at least a year and perhaps more for the extradition process to work its way through Mexican courts. The lawyer said he did not expect a quick extradition, however.
But Rodríguez suggested it could be done in two months, presumably if Guzmán dropped an estimated nine appeals his lawyers have filed. “Unfortunately, the business is not like going to buy a car,” he said. “This takes time and needs time and I ask myself, ‘Is there enough time for Joaquín to leave here alive and make it to the United States?”
However, Rodríguez said “we won’t drop the (legal) defense in Mexico until we have an agreement with the United States”. Guzmán’s wife, Emma Coronel, has complained of conditions inside the Almaloya prison, to the west of Mexico City. She alleged in an interview with Telemundo that he was being “tortured,” suffering from high blood pressure and given no privacy – “not even to go to the bathroom.” (Guzmán escaped through a small shaft connecting his shower with a tunnel.)
Related: Blood, mud and lube: how El Chapo's luck came up short in small town sex motel In testimony from Guzmán obtained by the Associated Press in February, the jailed drug boss accused prison authorities of torturing him “by waking him up”, and said, “I feel like a sleepwalker.”
Officials have acknowledged that guards at the Altilplano prison wake Guzmán every four hours for a head count. He escaped the same prison in July and was recaptured in January.
The harsher regime Guzmán also has fewer visits than during his last stint in prison seems to have broken him.
“I saw a defeated, humiliated man,” Rodríguez said.
In February, Rodriguez gave the Associated Press a copy of Guzmán’s testimony in one of the cases against him. In it, the jailed drug lord accused prison authorities of torturing him “by waking him up”, and said, “I feel like a sleepwalker.”
“My head and my ears always hurt and I feel bad all over,” Guzmán said in the document.“My head and my ears always hurt and I feel bad all over,” Guzmán said in the document.
The testimony also sheds light on the relatively permissive visitors’ schedule Guzmán enjoyed at the maximum-security prison before his escape in July. It has been reduced since he was recaptured in January. The testimony also revealed the relatively lax conditions Guzmán had previously enjoyed. Guzmán said that before his escape he had been granted a four-hour conjugal visit and a four-hour family visit every nine days, and was allowed an hour and a half with his lawyer every day, and an hour outside.
Guzmán said that previously he had been give an hour-and-a-half every day to talk to his lawyer and an hour in the sun in a prison patio. Every nine days, he was allowed a four-hour conjugal visit and a four-hour family visit. Authorities don’t deny they have restricted Guzmán’s privileges, though security commissioner Renato Sales told reporters, “He’s sleeping perfectly. There is no violation, I insist, of his fundamental rights.”
National security commissioner Renato Sales, whose responsibilities include overseeing federal prisons, said at a news conference Monday that Guzmán’s human rights are in no way being violated at the Altiplano prison,
Sales pointed out that Guzmán has escaped twice from Mexican prisons.Sales pointed out that Guzmán has escaped twice from Mexican prisons.
“Shouldn’t someone who twice escaped from maximum security prisons be subject to special security measures? The common sense answer is yes,” Sales said.“Shouldn’t someone who twice escaped from maximum security prisons be subject to special security measures? The common sense answer is yes,” Sales said.
Related: Blood, mud and lube: how El Chapo's luck came up short in small town sex motel
Mexican marines re-captured Guzmán on 8 January in the coastal city of Los Mochis in his home state of Sinaloa. His apparent infatuation with actress Kate del Castillo, who was in talks to produce a biopic of his life, put Mexican officials on his trail, according to leaked intelligence files and instant messages leaked to the Mexican media.
Guzmán boasted of the breadth of his criminal empire – and the variety of drugs it trafficked – in the interview, though that came as news to his wife.
“He is not the most powerful capo in the world,” she said, contradicting local lore in Sinaloa. “But the government made him the most wanted capo in the world perhaps to hide more important things.”