But as of Monday night, authorities had found no sign of the drug kingpin, who is known as El Chapo because of his small stature (Guzman is about five-feet-six inches tall). Mexican Armed Forces and police quickly launched a massive manhunt, and stopped all flights from the nearest airport. The tunnel featured lights, ventilation, and a motorcycle on rails, which clandestine construction workers may have used to carry out earth - and perhaps to whisk El Chapo to freedom. Saturday night and lowered himself into a small hole, 2-by-2 feet, that led to the tunnel, about 30 feet below ground. El Chapo went into the shower stall of his cell around 9 p.m.

The tunnel was constructed 30 feet below ground and is almost a mile long.

Saturday night, El Chapo used a tunnel to pull off an audacious escape Saturday night, from a maximum-security Altiplano prison where he’d been detained since Mexican Marines and police captured him in February 2014 in the seaside resort town of Mazatlan. Guzman, head of the Juarez Cartel, also escaped from another maximum security prison in 2001.Drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman built a large chunk of his Sinaloa Cartel’s billion dollar empire through sophisticated tunnels his operatives built to smuggle drugs into the United States and weapons and cash into Mexico. Proceedings were already under way against the person in charge of the penitentiary's control room and two prison guards. They were accused of aiding Guzman's escape through a tunnel dug to his cell. The other 10 suspects also worked in the penal system.Ī federal judge this month began proceedings in the case against four officials, including two intelligence service members and two prison control room employees. The suspects in the latest batch of arrests also included Leonor Garcia Garcia, head of the prison's legal department and top official on duty the night of the July 11 prison break, the official said.

Oseguera Parra and Cardenas Lerma were both forced to resign after the July 11 escape. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to be quoted by the press. MEXICO CITY - The former head of Mexico's federal prisons and the ex-director of the Altiplano penitentiary that drug capo Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman escaped from are among 13 additional people arrested in the jail break, an official with the federal Prosecutor's Office said Saturday.Ī statement from the Prosecutor's Office on Friday said 11 men and 2 women had been arrested, but didn't name them.Ĭelina Oseguera Parra, who oversaw the country's federal prisons, and Valentin Cardenas Lerma, the Altiplano prison director, were among those arrested, said an official with the Prosecutor's Office.

El chapo escape prison 2024