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Seth Wenig / AP
The wife of Mexican drug lord and escape artist Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán has been arrested on international drug trafficking charges at a Virginia airport.
The wife of Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán was arrested Monday (Tuesday NZT) at a Virginia airport on charges of international drug trafficking, the United States Department of Justice said, explaining in detail how she helped plan the daring escape from her husband. a prison in Mexico.
Emma Coronel Aispuro, 31, who has dual citizenship of the United States and Mexico, was arrested at Dulles International Airport and is expected to appear in federal court in Washington on Tuesday (local time).
She is charged in a single count criminal complaint with conspiracy to distribute cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and marijuana in the United States.
The Justice Department also accuses her of helping her husband escape from a Mexican prison in 2015 and of participating in planning a second escape before Guzmán was extradited to the United States in January 2017.
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Colonel Aispuro remained in custody and it was not immediately clear if he had a lawyer who could comment on the allegations.
As the most powerful drug trafficker in Mexico, Guzmán escaped through an entrance under the shower in his cell into a 1.6 kilometer long lighted tunnel with a motorcycle on rails.
Planning for the escape was extensive, prosecutors say, with his wife playing a key role. Court documents accuse that Coronel Aispuro worked with Guzmán’s children and a witness, who now cooperates with the United States government, to organize the construction of the underground tunnel that Guzmán used to escape from the Altiplano prison in Mexico to avoid his extradition to the US.
supplied / Stuff
Jaoquin “El Chapo” Guzmán was sentenced to life in prison in 2019.
The plot included buying land near the prison, firearms and an armored truck and smuggling a GPS watch from him so they could “identify his exact whereabouts and build the tunnel with an entry point accessible to him,” the documents say. judicial. .
Guzmán was sentenced to life in prison in 2019. His Sinaloa cartel was responsible for smuggling mountains of cocaine and other drugs into the United States during his 25-year reign, prosecutors said in recent court documents.
They also said that their “army of hitmen”, or “hit men,” had orders to kidnap, torture and kill anyone who got in their way. Colonel Aispuro, a former teenage beauty queen, regularly attended Guzmán’s trial, even when testimony was issued. her in a harsh light.
The two, separated in age for more than 30 years, have been together since at least 2007 and share twin daughters, who were born in 2011. Their father, Inés Coronel Barreras, was arrested in 2013 with one of his sons and several other men. in a warehouse with hundreds of pounds of marijuana across the border from Douglas, Arizona. Months before, USA
Mark Lennihan / AP
Emma Coronel Aispuro, 31, who has dual citizenship of the United States and Mexico, was arrested at Dulles International Airport and is expected to appear in federal court in Washington.
The Treasury had announced economic sanctions against Coronel Barreras for his alleged drug trafficking.
After Guzmán was arrested again after his escape, Colonel Aispuro pressured the Mexican government to improve her husband’s prison conditions. And after he was convicted in 2019, she moved to launch a clothing line in his name.
