Former powerful Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzman claims he can’t make phone calls or visit people in a maximum-security U.S. prison where he is serving a life sentence.
El Chapo filed a complaint in late March with Judge Brian M. Cogan of the Eastern District of New York, complaining that he was unable to speak to his twin daughters.
“The facility stopped calling me and my daughters and I haven’t spoken to them in seven months,” he wrote. “I asked my daughters when they would call me, but the staff here told me that the FBI agents monitoring the phones don’t answer. That’s all they told me. .
“As my daughters are studying abroad in Mexico, they are only able to visit me during school holidays, so please allow my daughters to visit me and to bring their daughters to visit me. ” Guzman wrote.
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Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzman, head of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, is escorted by helicopter to Mexico City after being captured in the beach resort city of Mazatlan. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo, File)
El Chapo said being denied communication with the outside world was “unprecedented discrimination.”
“This is unprecedented discrimination against me,” Guzman complained. “They decided to punish me by not letting me talk to my daughters.”
In this Jan. 19, 2017 file photo provided by a U.S. law enforcement agency, a caravan of SUVs waits for Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman (center) to leave his flight at Long Island MacArthur Airport in Ronkonkoma, New York. The authorities are guarding it. (U.S. Law Enforcement Agency via AP)
Kogan responded last week, denying Guzman’s request.
He said that after a drug lord is convicted, all arrangements are in the hands of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.
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“His request must therefore be denied,” the judge said.
Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman is escorted by soldiers during a presentation in Mexico City on January 8, 2016. (Reuters/Thomas Bravo/File photo)
Guzman is known as Mexico’s most notorious drug lord. was convicted of a crime On February 12, 2019, he was arrested in New York for conducting an industrial-scale smuggling operation.
He was sentenced to life imprisonment in July 2019.
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Prosecutors say Guzman ran a cartel that smuggled mountains of cocaine and other drugs into the United States during his 25-year reign.
Under his leadership, the Sinaloa Cartel, one of the world’s largest drug trafficking organizations, was responsible for multiple murders and smuggling operations in the United States.
In this undated photo provided by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzman (left) poses with an unidentified man. (U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York)
El Chapo is also known for escaping from multiple Mexican prisons before being sentenced to life at America’s most secure prison, the Administrative Maximum Penitentiary (ADX) in Florence, Colorado.
He first escaped from prison in 2001 and remained on the run for more than a decade before being recaptured, only to escape again in 2015 through a mile-long tunnel dug into his cell’s shower room. .
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Stephanie Pagones of The Associated Press and FOX News contributed to this report.
