|
 Speaking from Paris, where he was beginning a four-day state visit
just as Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman was breaking out of jail, Pena
Nieto called the escape an "affront to Mexico" and promised a full
investigation. But skepticism is rife in Mexico.
In February of 2014, when Guzman was re-arrested after a previous
jail break, Pena Nieto said another escape by the drug kingpin would
be "unforgivable." Since the latest escape Pena Nieto's critics have
reminded him incessantly of that statement.
Opposition politicians have also been quick to note that he did not
cut his Paris trip short, despite calls for him to do so. And
members of the ruling party and opposition alike are convinced that
the escape had to have been an inside job.
The mile-long tunnel would have required noisy digging equipment and
produced tons of dirt to be disposed of, they note. Moreover, the
tunnel came up exactly under the shower in Guzman's cell, which
suggests that the drug lord's accomplices had detailed information
about the prison's design.
 "There had to have been complicity," said Ricardo Pacheco, a
congressman in Pena Nieto's ruling Institutional Revolutionary
Party, or PRI, who heads the lower house justice committee.
"To have done a thing like this, you need immense quantities of all
kinds of resources: material, technical and human."
The escape came after a difficult 12 months in which Pena Nieto's
approval ratings had already fallen to multi-year lows.
Allegations of extra-judicial killings by the army, and of collusion
between police and a drug cartel in the apparent massacre of 43
trainee teachers last year sparked mass protests.
Since then, the president has sought to convince Mexicans that their
country was turning the corner, with a series of judicial and
anti-corruption reforms.
El Chapo's escape has seriously undermined that claim.
So far, 31 prison officials, including the facility's head, have
been taken in for questioning over Guzman's escape.
[to top of second column] |
But the attorney general's office had not interviewed people living
in the immediate surroundings of the prison as of midday Monday, a
spokesman for the office said.
Attention is also being focused on a nearby waterway expansion
project begun about a year ago. An open ditch with three reinforced
tubes 2.5 meters wide snaked around the prison, offering "the
perfect screen so people wouldn't notice the work on the escape
tunnel," said a soldier who declined to be named.
Malcolm Beith, a biographer of the drug lord, said Guzman's allies
probably obtained details on the facility's layout.
"I can only imagine Chapo or someone in his circle was given the
blueprints of the prison," he said.
Two soldiers and one policeman, speaking on condition of anonymity,
said that the alarm was not raised over Guzman's disappearance until
after 10 p.m., more than an hour after the government said he was
last seen at 8.52 p.m.
Elena Azaola, a prison expert at research center CIESAS, noted that
the building that housed Guzman met international standards of a
high security penitentiary.
"It's impossible to escape from that prison without total complicity
from the authorities and/or guards," she said.
(Additional reporting by Joanna Zuckerman Bernstein, Gabriel
Stargardter and Adriana Barrera; Writing by Dave Graham; Editing by
Sue Horton)
[© 2015 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.]
Copyright 2015 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
 |
