MAZATLAN, Mexico (Reuters) — Mexico's most
wanted man, drug cartel kingpin Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, was captured on
Saturday with help from U.S. agencies in a major victory for the
government in a long, grisly war.
Guzman, known as "El Chapo" (Shorty) in Spanish, has long run
Mexico's infamous Sinaloa Cartel and over the past decade he emerged
as one of the world's most powerful organized crime bosses, even
making it onto Forbes' list of billionaires.
He was caught in his native northwestern state of Sinaloa in an
early morning operation without a shot being fired, Attorney General
Jesus Murillo Karam said.
It is a political triumph for President Enrique Pena Nieto, who took
office in late 2012. Pena Nieto confirmed the capture via Twitter
earlier on Saturday and congratulated his security forces. The U.S.
government also applauded the arrest.
Guzman's cartel has smuggled billions of dollars worth of cocaine,
marijuana and methamphetamines into the United States, and fought
vicious turf wars with other Mexican gangs.
He pioneered the use of sophisticated underground tunnels to smuggle
drug shipments across the border and also became a major narcotics
exporter to Europe and Asia in recent years.
Nearly 80,000 people have been killed in the last seven years with
much of the violence in western and northern regions that have long
been key smuggling routes.
Many of the victims are tortured and beheaded and their bodies
dumped in a public place or in mass graves. The violence has ravaged
border cities and even beach resorts such as Acapulco.
Guzman, 56, was captured in a pre-dawn raid on a seaside condominium
in the northwestern tourist resort and fishing and shrimp-processing
center of Mazatlan, around 135 miles from Guzman's suspected base in
Culiacan.
He was then flown to Mexico City. Wearing a cream shirt and dark
jeans and with a black moustache, he was frog-marched in front of
reporters on live TV, bound for prison.
It was the first public glimpse of the elusive kingpin since he
escaped from prison in 2001.
The 5-foot, 6-inch (1.7-metre) Guzman looked briefly toward TV crews
on the tarmac at the Marines' hangar at Mexico City's airport. His
head was shoved back down by a soldier wearing a face mask.
Murillo Karam said security forces had nearly caught Guzman days
earlier, but he gave them the slip.
"The doors of the house ... were reinforced with steel and so in the
minutes it took us to open them, it allowed for an escape through
tunnels," he said.
They then tracked him down again and waited for the right moment to
strike, Murillo Karam said, adding that some U.S. agencies had
helped in the capture.
He gave no more details but a U.S. Homeland Security source said
Mexican forces worked jointly with agents from the Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and
the U.S. Marshals Service.
It was not clear whether Guzman would now face trial in Mexico or be
extradited to the United States.
QUICK OPERATION
Alberto Islas, a security expert with Risk Evaluation, said Pena
Nieto ordered his cabinet to capture Guzman immediately after taking
office in December 2012, and handed the job to the Marines, widely
seen as less corrupt than other security forces.
Citing people involved in the operation, he said 25 Marines entered
the condominium where Guzman was staying and evaded two security
teams there to protect the drug lord. Guzman and three other people,
including a woman, were asleep at the time.
The whole operation took around 7-1/2 minutes and neighbors only
realized it had taken place when they heard the helicopter whisking
Guzman away, Islas said.
Mexican TV channel Foro TV broadcast footage of the inside of the
relatively modest condominium, where the door to the apartment where
Guzman was sleeping had been kicked in.
A swimming pool was in the yard below, and just across the road, a
beach. The apartments have views over the sea.
After the raid, clothes and bed sheets were left strewn over the
tiled floor of the austere dwelling. Short-term lets for a two
bedroom apartment in the complex run at around $1,200 a month,
according to rental websites.
Traffic snarled outside the property on Saturday evening as
motorists stopped to snap photos. Colored lights lined the road
ahead of carnival celebrations due next week.
Local builder Arturo Ramos, 35, drove with his family to see the
site. He said there had been no extortion since Guzman took control
of the area in around 2009, and now fears another cartel will try to
move in.
"We're worried this will mean war here," he said. "All of us who
have businesses here are worried about his capture. No one will be
able to protect us, not the federal government, no one."
"There was stability under him," he added. "There were no robberies,
no kidnappings. Now there will be chaos."
Guzman's exploits have made him a legend in many impoverished
communities of northern Mexico, where he has been immortalized in
dozens of ballads and low-budget movies.
The United States had placed a $5 million bounty on Guzman's head
and authorities in Chicago last year dubbed him the city's first
Public Enemy No. 1 since gangster Al Capone.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder described the arrest as a landmark
achievement. "The criminal activity Guzman allegedly directed
contributed to the death and destruction of millions of lives across
the globe through drug addiction, violence and corruption."
The Homeland Security source said U.S. agents assisted on the ground
near the arrest site, and that the operation was the result of
connecting many dots, not a single tip.
"I don't think either the Mexicans or our guys could have done this
by themselves," he said. "We've been searching for years and
wouldn't have been in this position without leveraging and combining
assets from Mexico, the DEA, ICE and the Marshals."
Drugs violence in Mexico exploded after conservative former
President Felipe Calderon sent in the army in early 2007 to try to
quell powerful cartel bosses.
Some were captured or killed but the campaign triggered turf wars
and countless atrocities. While the centrist Pena Nieto has
criticized Calderon's policy, he also found it tough to break with.
Calderon congratulated Pena Nieto's government in a message on
Twitter on Saturday, describing the arrest as a "great blow."
There was some concern in the United States that Pena Nieto might
not be as aggressive in pursuing cartel leaders as Calderon had
been, but Guzman's capture will ease those fears.
However, his capture is seen unlikely to interrupt the flow
northward of cocaine, heroin, marijuana and crystal meth.
"This is indeed a very significant development and will no doubt
have a huge ... symbolic value for the Mexican government and for
U.S.-Mexico cooperation," said David Shirk, an expert on drug
trafficking at the Wilson Center in Washington.
"The one thing that is clear is that this is not the end of the war.
There's, unfortunately, many other players involved in moving
illicit drugs into the United States."
FROM HUMBLE ROOTS TO BILLIONAIRE
From humble beginnings in a ramshackle village, Guzman rose up in
the 1980s under the tutelage of Sinaloan kingpin Miguel Angel Felix
Gallardo, alias "The Boss of Bosses," who pioneered cocaine
smuggling routes into the United States.
He came to prominence in 1993, when assassins who shot dead Roman
Catholic Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas claimed they had been gunning
for Guzman but got the wrong target.
Guzman is the latest in a series of high-profile capos to be caught
or killed.
Last July, Pena Nieto's government caught the leader of the Zetas
drug cartel, Miguel Angel Trevino, also known as Z-40.
The Zetas have been blamed for many of the worst atrocities of
Mexico's drugs war, acts that have sullied the country's reputation
and put fear into tourists and investors alike.
Analysts were divided on whether Guzman's lieutenant Ismael "El
Mayo" Zambada would take the helm of the Sinaloa Cartel.
Alejandro Hope, security director at the Mexican Competitiveness
Institute think tank, said Guzman's downfall represented the end of
a 30-year era of high-profile drug lords running riot across Mexico.
"There will be very few figures of this caliber," he said.
Pena Nieto has sought to play down the drug fight, seeking to focus
public attention on a series of economic reforms spanning energy to
telecoms, which he has pushed through Congress aiming to boost
long-lagging economic growth.
He has also tried an unorthodox strategy, co-opting vigilantes in
western Mexico in the fight against the feared Knights Templar
Cartel. Security experts say this is potentially playing with fire.
Guzman has been caught before, and famously gave his jailers the
slip. In 2001, he escaped from prison, reportedly in a laundry cart,
to become Mexico's most high-profile trafficker. He is believed to
command groups of hitmen from the U.S. border into Central America.
He was indicted in the United States on dozens of charges of
racketeering and conspiracy to import illegal drugs.
Forbes dropped Guzman from its list of billionaires last year,
because it was impossible to verify his wealth.
(Additional reporting by Mark Hosenball and John Shiffman in
Washington and Liz Diaz, Gabriel Stargardter, Adriana Barrera, Julia
Symmes Cobb and Simon Gardner in Mexico City; editing by Kieran
Murray, Frances Kerry and Lisa Shumaker)
