US Says El Chapo Guzman's Prison Escape Could Trigger More Border Violence Dolia Estevez - Forbes
go to original September 18, 2015

El Chapo: World's Most Wanted Drug Lord or Mexico's Most Revered Outlaw Hero? (Al Jazeera)

Testifying before Congress last week, Robert Harris, the man in charge of border security at the Department of Homeland Security, warned that the recent escape of Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera, “could potentially instigate further border violence similar to incidents following his first prison escape in 2001.”

On July 11, Guzmán, one of the world’s most famous and powerful drug criminals, fled an alleged maximum-security prison near Mexico City through a tunnel built under his cell. Four middle to low-level officials have been arrested in connection to his escape.

Guzmán’s current whereabouts are unknown, despite a massive international manhunt to recapture him and a $5 million reward offered by the Obama Administration. More than half a dozen criminal indictments are pending against him in several U.S. states.

Fourteen years ago, the head of the powerful Sinaloa cartel, which is responsible for flooding U.S. streets with cocaine and heroin, also escaped from of a high-security prison in the Western state of Jalisco, allegedly by bribing corrupt prison guards.

Harris’s warnings are not unwarranted. Guzmán’s 2001 break out unleashed a bloody drug cartel turf war, with Guzmán attempting to take over lucrative border crossing points controlled by rival cartels. During the following years, cartel leaders were executed in daylight and violence, particularly in the border region, reached new levels.

Read the rest at Forbes

Related: Mexico Arrests 13 in Connection with El Chapo Escape (Ghana Web)

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