The world’s most wanted drug lord, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, was recaptured by Mexican security forces Friday after a fierce pre-dawn gun battle in a western city that left five people dead, authorities said.
Washington Post reports that Guzmán’s capture was the culmination of a furious manhunt that began when the drug lord tunneled out of a maximum-security prison nearly six months ago.
Friday’s operation took place in the Pacific town of Los Mochis, in Sinaloa state, the headquarters of Guzmán’s drug-trafficking cartel, which ships more cocaine and marijuana to the United States than any other cartel, plus more than half the heroin that reaches the country. Members of the Mexican navy raided a home after a tip about gunmen inside, setting off a shootout that also injured one of the Mexican marines, according to a military statement.
The news was an immediate boost to Peña Nieto, who has struggled with corruption scandals, drug violence and the humiliation of the escape last year by Mexico’s most famous prisoner. Peña Nieto, speaking later Friday in a televised address from the national palace, shared the credit with Mexico’s armed forces and intelligence services.
“Day and night, they worked to accomplish the mission I gave them, to recapture this criminal and bring him to justice,” Peña Nieto said. “Months of intense and careful intelligence work and criminal investigation allowed them to detain this criminal and dismantle his network of influence and protection.”
It was not immediately clear whether Mexico would try again to hold Guzmán behind bars or extradite him to the United States, but it seemed likely that American officials would press to have him handed over. After Guzmán’s last arrest, in 2014, the U.S. government wanted him to face a multitude of pending charges in American courts. But Mexican authorities refused, considering it a point of pride for them to interrogate and prosecute their most important criminal in their own judicial system.
For a year and a half before his escape last year, Guzmán had been held in Altiplano prison outside Mexico City, supposedly the nation’s most secure detention center, where he lived in a tiny concrete cell with a hole in the floor for a toilet. His accomplices cut through the floor of his shower stall and ferried him into a mile-long tunnel equipped with a motorcycle. Several prison officials have since been accused of facilitating his escape.
In a statement Friday, U.S. Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch said Guzmán’s capture represented “a victory for the citizens of both Mexico and the United States, and a vindication of the rule of law in our countries.” She later called her Mexican counterpart, Arely Gómez, to congratulate her.
It is unclear what role the United States played in the capture, but American officials have lately been praising their security partnership with the Mexican government. Guzmán’s capture in Mazatlan in 2014 was due in part to extensive American wiretapping and intelligence work to track the kingpin’s bodyguards.
Since the billionaire drug lord escaped last year, he had grown into a fugitive of epic proportions in the public imagination. He had broken out of a Mexican prison twice in the past two decades and seemed capable of outwitting authorities at every turn. During his latest period on the lam there were only sporadic reports of his whereabouts, including rumors that he had injured his leg fleeing one of many military operations to find him.
The arrest confirmed what many Chapo-watchers assumed, that he would not flee Mexico but would return to his home state, where he would have protection from residents, corrupt local police and his extensive cartel network. Around his home town, in the remote Sierra Madre mountains of eastern Sinaloa, checkered with plots of marijuana and opium poppy, residents have often praised Guzmán for his largesse, which included giving them jobs and medical care and even air-dropping bags of money from Cessnas into peasant villages.
But like the first time he was recaptured, in a 2014 raid on his condominium in the beach resort city of Mazatlan, he was caught on the coast Friday — this time after a battle near a two-story white house on a residential street of Los Mochis, with a palm tree out front, televised images show.
A neighbor who lives about two blocks from the house, in an upper-middle-class subdivision, said by telephone that the commotion started about 3:40 a.m. Speaking on the condition of anonymity because of security concerns, the neighbor said she heard gunfire and what she assumed to be bombs, and rushed to a windowless room inside her house for safety.
