Cartel leader Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman made a public plea to Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to remove him from the “cruel and unfair” conditions in a United States prison.
The drug kingpin was extradited to the United States in 2017 and has spent his imprisonment in a maximum security prison in Florence, Colorado. There, he complains of conditions amounting to “psychological torture” and is now appealing with AMLO directly, through his lawyers, to move him to a prison in Mexico, Mexico News Daily reported.
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“He doesn’t see the sun, the food is of very bad quality, there is no healthcare; he had a problem with his molars and instead of treating them, they took them out so he wouldn’t fuss,” Jose Refugio Rodriguez, Guzman’s legal representative in Mexico, said on Radio Formula in an interview with journalist Ciro Gomez Leyva.
Other poor conditions endured by the drug lord included a prohibition on speaking Spanish, being kept in solitary confinement, and only being allowed half a dozen calls since March.
“Joaquin [Guzman] asked me through verbal messages to fight for his return to Mexico,” he added. “I see it as an SOS. … He is hurting from a trial that was not in accordance with due process.”
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The legal representative said he was giving the radio interview with Leyva, himself a recent target of a cartel assassination attempt, in an effort to reach AMLO, who he was unable to meet with directly. He said he had attempted to contact Mexico’s ambassador in the U.S. as well, to no avail.
Guzman was sentenced to life imprisonment in the U.S. in July 2019 on a plethora of charges ranging from homicide to drug trafficking.
