El Chapo ordered hits on his own family, New York court hears
Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman was a ruthless criminal boss who ordered hits on his own loved ones and his weapons of choice included a diamond-encrusted pistol and a gold-plated AK-47, a court has heard.
Guzman, considered the world's largest drug trafficker since the death of Colombia's Pablo Escobar, is on trial in New York under draconian security arrangements after twice escaping from prison in Mexico.
He faces 11 trafficking, firearms and money laundering charges in what is expected to be a more than four-month trial.
He waved to his beauty queen wife, Emma Coronel, with whom he has been banned from having any direct contact or communication, when he saw her in court on Tuesday.
Guzman is accused of leading the Sinaloa cartel and turning it into the largest criminal organization on the planet and using his own private army to take out his rivals.
Jurors were told they would hear chilling details of how Guzman operated during the trial - including how he turned parts of Mexico into war zones as he fought rivals to expand his reach.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Adam Fels told jurors they would hear of how Guzman personally shot two members of a rival cartel and ordered them thrown into holes and burned.
But Guzman's defense claim he controlled nothing and is a scapegoat for the real leader of the Sinaloa cartel, Ismael 'El Mayo' Zambada, who remains at large because he's bribed Mexican presidents.
Both Mexico's outgoing President Enrique Pena Nieto and his predecessor, Felipe Calderon, swiftly denied taking any bribes from the Sinaloa cartel.
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Guzman, surrounded by US Marshals, waves to his wife as he enters the courtroom at Brooklyn Federal Court on Tuesday
Emma Coronel, center, El Chapo's beauty queen wife, leaves Brooklyn Federal court after opening arguments in the trial on Tuesday
Guzman's weapons of choice were a diamond-encrusted pistol branded with his initials (pictured) and a gold-plated AK-47
'He's blamed for being the leader while the real leaders are living freely and openly in Mexico,' attorney Jeffrey Lichtman said.
'In truth he controlled nothing. Mayo Zambada did.'
Zambada, he alleged, bribed everybody, 'including the very top, the current president of Mexico and the former,' he added in reference to Nieto and Calderon.
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Share'The affirmations said to have been made by the lawyer of Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman are absolutely false and reckless,' Calderon wrote on Twitter.
'Neither he, nor the Sinaloa cartel nor anyone else made payments to me.'
Nieto said the allegation was 'completely false and defamatory.'
But Lichtman told the court: 'Mayo can get people arrested and get the Mexican army and police kill who he wants.'
Guzman, who has been in solitary confinement in America and whose trial is accompanied by massive security, is a 'scapegoat,' the lawyer claimed.
Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman' (center, in a courtroom sketch) controlled nothing and is a scapegoat for the real leader of the Sinaloa cartel, his lawyer has claimed
The defense alleged that Guzman's co-defendant who remains at large, Ismael 'El Mayo' Zambada (pictured), was the real leader of Mexico's Sinaloa cartel
'Why does the Mexican government need a scapegoat? Because they're making too much money being bribed by the leaders of drug cartels.'
Lichtman's statement came after Fels laid out the US government's case, describing how prosecutors would prove that Guzman rose from a low-level marijuana trafficker in the 1970s to lead the powerful Sinaloa Cartel.
Fels said that Guzman, 61, eventually established relationships with Colombian cartels that allowed him to make billions of dollars moving cocaine.
He said jurors would see evidence of seized cocaine shipments adding up to 'more than a line of cocaine for every single person in the United States.'
Prosecutors contend that Guzman spent a quarter of a century smuggling cocaine into the United States.
Guzman (pictured in January 2016), one of the world's most notorious criminals, is on trial for drug smuggling in New York after twice escaping from prison in Mexico
Emma Coronel, center, leaves Brooklyn Federal court after opening arguments in her husband's trial
They say that from 1989 to 2014, the Sinaloa smuggled 340,892 pounds (154,626 kilograms) of cocaine into the United States, as well as heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana, raking in $14 billion.
'Money, drugs, murder; a vast global narcotics trafficking organization. That is what this trial is about and that is what the evidence in this case will prove,' Fels told the court.
Guzman, he alleged in his opening statements, had his 'own private army' of hundreds of men armed with assault rifles, as well as his own diamond-encrusted pistol branded with his initials and a gold-plated AK-47.
The prosecutors' witnesses are expected to include former Guzman associates who are now cooperating with the U.S. government in exchange for more favorable treatment, likely including Zambada's brother Jesus 'El Rey' Zambada and son Vicente Zambada.
Joaquin Guzman's defense attorney Jeffrey Lichtman speaks to reporters as he leaves Brooklyn Federal court after opening arguments in the trial on Tuesday
A motorcade transporting the Mexican drug lord crosses the Brooklyn Bridge before arriving at the Brooklyn Federal Courthouse
The motorcade crosses the Brooklyn Bridge before arriving at the Brooklyn Federal Courthouse
Lichtman spent much of his opening statement attacking their credibility.
'Why is the government going so far in this case using these gutter human beings as the evidence?' he asked. 'It's because the conviction of Chapo Guzman is the biggest prize this prosecution could ever dream of.'
Lichtman urged jurors to 'keep an open mind' and consider that both Mexican and U.S. law enforcement could be corrupt.
'They work together when it suits them, Mayo (Zambada) and the United States government,' he said.
Lichtman also strove to humanize the defendant, describing his childhood selling oranges, cheese and bread door to door in a poor village.
US prosecutors have spent years piecing together a case that they hope will end with Guzman spending the rest of his life behind bars in a maximum-security US prison, accumulating more than 300,000 pages and at least 117,000 recordings in evidence against Guzman.
While he is not on trial for murder, they contend that he ordered or committed at least 33 homicides. 'You'll see how Guzman pulls the trigger,' the prosecutor told jurors.
Prosecutors promised to discuss 'this global narco empire in his own words' and from witnesses detailing how he would receive $10 million from a single shipment of cocaine.
More than a dozen of the several hundred witnesses expected to testify are in witness protection programs or are already in jail, housed in special wings to protect them from reprisals.
'You'll have the chance to read his text messages, evidence of drug deals, killings, corruption,' Fels said.
He faces 11 trafficking, firearms and money laundering charges in what is expected to be a more than four-month trial. The Brooklyn Federal Courthouse is pictured on Tuesday
'He was indeed the boss of his organization,' the prosecutor added, saying Guzman 'used planes, trains, automobiles, fishing vessels, trucks, even submarines,' to traffic drugs to the United States.
Lichtman did not finish his statement and is expected to resume Wednesday.
In addition to Lichtman, Guzman's lawyers at the trial include Eduardo Balarezo and William Purpura, who previously defended Mexican drug lord Alfredo Beltran Leyva, once a partner and later a rival of Guzman. Beltran Leyva pleaded guilty to U.S. drug charges and was sentenced to life in prison by a federal judge in Washington last year.
Opening statements in Guzman's trial finally got underway after two jurors were dismissed from the lineup, forcing lawyers and the judge to re-interview potential candidates before the full panel could be sworn in.
Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman arrived in New York in January 2017. He twice escaped from prison in Mexico, once hidden in a laundry cart and the second time slipping down a tunnel
One woman was struck after complaining that the trial was causing her health problems, along with a man who said he would not be able to support himself financially during the trial. Two replacements were subsequently found.
The 12 jurors who will determine the 61-year-old defendant's guilt or innocence have an enormous and onerous task before them.
During jury selection last week, several potential jurors were dismissed because they feared for their lives, as was another who suffered a panic attack.
Their names will be kept anonymous. They will be partially sequestered, escorted to and from court every day by armed US Marshals.
Guzman arrived in New York in January 2017. He twice escaped from prison in Mexico, once hidden in a laundry cart and the second time slipping down a tunnel that reached his prison shower.
In New York, he spends 23 hours a day in his cell. The only visitors he is allowed are his lawyers and daughters, from whom he is separated by thick glass.
He's banned from seeing his wife, who stopped to take a couple of selfies when she exited court in the evening.
Emma Coronel, Guzman's third wife, married him on her 18th birthday in 2007. She gave birth to twin girls in 2011, raising his number of children to nine.
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