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Emma Coronel Aispuro, 31, is suspected of planning the harrowing escape from “El Chapo,” where a long tunnel was dug for the prison shower.
The drug lord’s own wife flew straight into the arms of the FBI.
“She is very naive about the American judiciary,” drug investigator Mike Vigil told The Guardian.
The wife of drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, sentenced to life in prison, was arrested in an FBI raid when she landed at Dulles airport in Washington on Monday.
On Tuesday, she participated in a court hearing via video link where the federal judge ruled that Emma Coronel Aispuro should be detained without the right to bail.
Prosecutors said she represented a flight risk with access to large sums of money and stated that “the suspect worked closely with the leadership of the drug trafficking organization known as the Sinaloa cartel, mainly with her husband.”
He is suspected of being involved in a ring involving the smuggling of cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and marijuana into the United States.
Photo: Police
Emma Coronel Aispuro, 31.
“Naive before the judiciary”
For 25 years, “El Chapo” led the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico. They smuggled drugs and weapons into the United States. According to court documents, he had an army of criminals under his command who kidnapped, tortured, and murdered anyone who crossed his path.
Coronel was on the scene every day during her husband’s 2018 New York trial, according to reporters at the scene, constantly chewing gum behind large sunglasses.
Regarding the trial, he claimed that he knew nothing about the activities of the Sinaloa cartel and that “El Chapo” was a “humble man” who was made “too famous” by the media.
Information that Emma Coronel Aispuro may have participated in her husband’s spectacular escape from the Altiplano prison in Mexico in 2015 already emerged during the trial in New York. Despite this, the wife appears to have thought she was safe from the US authorities and risked flying to Washington.
“Emma Coronel is very naive about the US judiciary,” Mike Vigil, former head of the DEA’s Department of International Operations, told The Guardian.
– She must have felt very sure that nothing would happen to her.
Before El Chapo’s escape, Coronel gave instructions to his children from a previous marriage on how the operation would go, according to the FBI investigation.
In 2014, the family bought land just over a kilometer from the prison, built a house on the site, and dug a tunnel that led to the prison.
In July 2015, “El Chapo” escaped through a hole in the prison shower wall and exited through the tunnel, which was lit, ventilated and equipped with a motorcycle on rails.
He was arrested again the following year and extradited to the United States in 2017.
A written testimony from FBI Agent Eric McGuire, who was invoked during the court hearing, states that the 31-year-old wife undoubtedly knew what her husband was doing. Both his father and brothers are said to have been members of the cartel.
“Coronel knows and understands that the Sinaloa cartel is the most productive cartel in Mexico,” he said.
Described as a drug celebrity
The written testimony also contains handwritten letters from “El Chapo” that the wife is said to have handed over to her henchmen.
“The mother of the twins will give a message to all to see in person,” reads one of the letters that the FBI agent allegedly received from a cartel source.
Emma Coronel Aispuro has nine-year-old twins with “El Chapo”. The couple met when Coronel was 17 years old. Joaquín Guzmán and his men showed up to see her win a beauty pageant at a festival in her hometown.
Falko Ernst, an expert on Mexico at the international think tank International Crisis Group, which works on conflict prevention, believes that Coronel’s arrest should be seen primarily as symbolic.
– She is not a great player. She is a celebrity on drugs, she tells The Guardian.
– So the decision to arrest her and retain her in the United States is more symbolic. It’s a way of getting the message across that the United States continues to be a factor in what we call the “war on drugs” here in Mexico.
On Tuesday, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador commented on the arrest, saying “this is a matter for the United States to decide.”
Emma Coronel Aispuro was born in California when her mother was in the United States to meet relatives, but grew up in Mexico. He has dual citizenship.
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