22 arrested in 'El Chapo' escape
July 15, 2015
The office of Mexico's attorney general has released 12 of the 34 prison staff members detained since drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman escaped Saturday, but placed the rest in formal custody. Prosecutors now have 96 hours to either charge or release them.
Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong said on Tuesday that Guzman "must have" had help from prison officials.
Guzman remains on the run after slipping out through a 1.5-kilometer (1-mile) tunnel dug under his private shower in a maximum-security prison near Mexico City. Prosecutor General Arely Gomez (pictured) announced an award of 60 million pesos (3.5 million euros/$3.8 million) for information leading to his rearrest.
Celebrated in song
On Tuesday, the Chicago Crime Commission announced that it would formally restore Guzman's title as the city's Public Enemy No. 1. The CCC had first awarded the dubious honor to Al Capone in 1930 to highlight the violence that plagued the city under the Prohibition Era-bootlegger and racketeer.
In 2013, Guzman became the first person awarded the title since Capone, with the CCC seeking to highlight how his Sinaloa-based cartel had dominated the drug trade in the Midwestern US city 3,600 kilometers to the north. Chicago has become a key transit hub for the cartel in its efforts to ship mass quantities of drugs in the United States to meet a rabid national demand. The commission had stripped Guzman of the title following his arrest last year, but his weekend escape made him the first two-time Public Enemy No. 1.
Guzman's escape has inspired not only judicial suspicions, fears of fresh drug violence and the restored Chicago title, but also new "narcocorridos" - ballads celebrating outlaws in what many consider a corrupt system.
In a survey, 44 percent of Mexicans blamed corruption for Guzman's second escape in 14 years - with officers' help, he rolled out of prison in a laundry cart in 2001 - while 16 percent blamed official incompetence. A further 19 percent credited El Chapo's fortune and influence. The drug lord is a former Forbes-listed billionaire.
"Escaping from the government / to that he is accustomed / the gates don't hold him," Omar y Sus Amanecidos de la Sierra (Omar and His All-Nighters of the Mountains) sings in the "King of the Tunnel."
"The government of Mexico," the song continues. "It's very easy to buy it."
mkg/cmk (EFE, Reuters, AFP, dpa, AP)