El Chapo goes on trial in New York
November 5, 2018
The trial of notorious Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman began in a New York court on Monday with the selection of 12 anonymous jurors.
The trial in Brooklyn under tight security brings 17 criminal charges against the 61-year-old former head of the Sinaloa drug cartel, including drug trafficking, money laundering and running a criminal organization.
Read more: Mexico records most violent year in decades
Prosecutors describe Guzman as one of the most dangerous and feared drug kingpins, who between 1989 and 2014 ran the world's largest drug trafficking organization.
Jury selection is expected to take a few days with opening statements set to start on November 13.
Behind closed doors
Judge Brian Cogan has taken the extraordinary step of holding the trial behind closed doors. Due to security concerns, the jurors' identity will be kept secret and they will be guarded by armed marshals on the way from court to home during the expected four-month trial.
According to the indictment, Guzman is responsible for ordering thousands of murders during the years his Sinaloa Cartel funneled 200 metric tons of cocaine as well as other drugs into the United States, pulling in $14 billion (€12.3 billion).
Legal experts say prosecutors have a rock-hard case against Guzman. If he is found guilty of just one charge, he may well land a life sentence.
He has been in solitary confinement in a high-security New York prison since Mexico extradited him to the United States in January 2017.
Guzman escaped prison twice in Mexico, once in a laundry basket in 2001 after running the cartel from a cell for seven years. He was rearrested in 2014 only to escape 14 months later from a tunnel dug into the prison. Mexican authorities then recaptured the fugitive in January 2016.
Guzman's co-defendant Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada remains at large.
cw/ng (AFP, AP, dpa, Reuters)