Most wanted drug lord, El Chapo captured, US seeks extradition

Mexican authorities on Friday recaptured the fugitive drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, six months after his prison break, President Enrique Pena Nieto said.

“Mission accomplished: We got him. I want to inform Mexicans that Joaquin Guzman Loera has been arrested,” Pena Nieto wrote on Twitter.

News of his arrest came shortly after the navy reported that five suspects were killed in a clash with marines in the Sinaloa city of Los Mochis, but it did not indicate whether it was related to Guzman.

Meanwhile, the United States appears almost certain to request the extradition of El Chapo, who has twice escaped prison in Mexico.

The U.S. Department of Justice said Friday it doesn’t comment on pending extradition requests “before they become the subject of public judicial proceedings.”

But spokesman Peter Carr said: “I can confirm that it is the practice of the United States to seek extradition whenever defendants subject to U.S. charges are apprehended in another country.”

Guzman is included in at least seven indictments in various U.S. jurisdictions.

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There also is a provisional arrest warrant in Mexico on behalf of the United States that was issued more than a decade ago, Carr said. At that time the United States asked Mexican authorities to send Guzman to the United States for prosecution.

Guzman escaped a Mexican prison in July, crawling through a hole in his cell block’s shower area into a lighted, ventilated tunnel, then to a half-built house.

The Mexican President didn’t indicate whether he would consider extradition.

In the past, Mexican authorities asserted their sovereignty to first prosecute Guzman for crimes in Mexico, despite U.S. officials’ concerns the drug kingpin would escape from prison as he had done in 2001.

Analysts last year advanced many interpretations on why Mexico declined to extradite Guzman to the United States shortly after his arrest in 2014.

Some said Nieto wanted to limit U.S. involvement in Mexico’s drug war and felt having the United States possibly imprison Mexico’s top criminal would be a blow to the country’s ego and sovereignty.

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