El Chapo Sentenced To Life In Prison Plus 30 Years

Mexican drug lord Joaquin Archivaldo Guzman, popularly known as "El Chapo" was found guilty of running a murderous criminal enterprise and was convicted to a life sentence plus 30years in prison. He was forced to make a sudden departure to the highest-security prison in Colorado, U.S. to serve the term.
A government helicopter whisked the notorious drug lord known for his daring jailbreaks, out of New York City on Wednesday after the sentencing in federal court in Brooklyn.
The drug lord had been protected in Mexico by an army of gangsters who were part of the notorious Sinaloa cartel he founded in 1989. Under Guzman, the Sinloa cartel smuggled hundreds of thousands of tons of cocaine, heroin and marijuana to the US.
Since 2017, Guzman, 62, has been extradited in the US to face drug-trafficking charges. He had been the subject of extreme security measures. Authorities were determined to prevent any legendary jailbreaks in Mexico, including the one in 2015 involving a mile-long (1.6 kilometer-long) tunnel dug to the shower in his cell.

Guzman was put in solitary confinement in a high-security wing of the Manhattan jail that has housed terrorists and mobsters.

"When extradited,  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 before the sentence was imposed.
"I drink unsanitary water, no air or sunlight, and the air pumped in makes my ears and throat hurt," he said about his conditions at sentencing. "This has been psychological, emotional and mental torture 24 hours a day."


"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." he said


For pretrial hearings in Brooklyn, authorities transporting Guzman to and from jail shut down the Brooklyn Bridge to make way for a police motorcade that includes a SWAT team and an ambulance, all tracked by helicopters. Once the trial started, they secretly kept him locked up in the bowels of the courthouse during the week to make the logistics less arduous.


The apparent next — and last — stop for Guzman: a prison called the "Alcatraz of the Rockies."
Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui and Oklahoma City bombing accomplice Terry Nichols are among those who call it home.