WASHINGTON (AP) – A federal judge ordered the wife of Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman to remain temporarily in prison after being arrested and accused of helping her husband manage her multi-billion dollar cartel and planning her audacious escape from a Mexican prison in 2015.
Emma Coronel Aispuro, 31, appeared on video conference for an initial hearing before a federal judge in Washington, DC The judge’s order came after Colonel’s lawyer, Jeffrey Lichtman, said he would consent to his temporary detention after his arrest at Dulles International Airport in Virginia.
US Magistrate Judge Robin Meriweather explained the charges to Colonel, who spoke to the judge through a Spanish interpreter. She said prosecutors had provided sufficient reasons to keep Colonel behind bars for the time being and noted that her lawyer had consented to the temporary detention.
Prosecutor Anthony Nardozzi said the United States government believed Colonel should remain in prison, arguing that she “worked closely with the command and control structure” of the Sinaloa cartel, especially with her husband. Nardozzi said he conspired to distribute large quantities of drugs, knowing that they would be smuggled illegally into the United States.
Nardozzi said that Colonel had access to criminal associates, including other members of the cartel, and “financial means to generate a serious risk of flight”. If convicted, she faces up to 10 years in prison.
His arrest was the latest twist in the bloody multinational saga involving Guzman, the longtime head of the Sinaloa drug cartel. Guzman, whose two dramatic escapes from prison in Mexico fueled the legend that he and his family were practically untouchable, he was extradited to the United States in 2017 and is serving a life sentence.
And now his wife, with whom he has two daughters, has been accused of helping him to manage his crime empire. In a single criminal case, Colonel was charged with conspiracy to distribute cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and marijuana in the United States. The Justice Department also accused her of helping her husband escape from a Mexican prison in 2015 and of participating in planning a second prison break before Guzman was extradited to the United States.
As Mexico’s most powerful drug lord, Guzman led a cartel responsible for smuggling mountains of cocaine and other drugs into the United States during his 25-year reign, prosecutors said in recent court documents. They also said that their “army of hit men”, or “gunmen”, had orders to kidnap, torture and kill anyone who crossed their path.
His escape from prison became legend and raised serious questions about whether Mexico’s justice system was able to hold him accountable. In one case, he escaped through an entrance under the shower in his cell to a lighted tunnel a mile long with a motorcycle on rails. Planning for the escape was extensive, prosecutors say, with his wife playing a key role.
Court documents claim that Colonel worked with Guzman’s children and a witness, who is now cooperating with the U.S. government, to organize the construction of the underground tunnel that Guzman used to escape from the Altiplano prison to prevent his extradition to the U.S. The plot included buying a piece of land near the prison, firearms and an armored truck and smuggling him a GPS watch so that they could “locate his exact whereabouts to build the tunnel with a gateway accessible to him,” they say. court papers.
Guzman was sentenced to life in prison in 2019.
Colonel, who was a beauty queen in her teens, regularly attended the Guzman trial, even when the testimony implied her escape from prison. The two, separated by age for more than 30 years, have been together since at least 2007, and their twin daughters were born in 2011.
Her father, Ines Coronel Barreras, was arrested in 2013 with one of his children and several other men in a warehouse with hundreds of pounds of marijuana on the border in Douglas, Arizona. Months earlier, the United States Treasury had announced financial sanctions against his father for alleged drug trafficking.
After Guzman was arrested again after his escape, Colonel pressed the Mexican government to improve her husband’s prison conditions. And after he was convicted in 2019, she launched a clothing line in his name.
Mike Vigil, former head of international operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration, said Colonel “has been involved in drug trafficking since he was a little girl. She knows the inner workings of the Sinaloa cartel. “
He said that she might be willing to cooperate.
“She has great motivation, her twins,” said Vigil.
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Associated Press writers Christopher Sherman and Mark Stevenson of Mexico City contributed to this report.