Mexican drug lord faces array of charges in US

WASHINGTON Back in 1995, a federal grand jury in San Diego charged a little-known Mexican drug trafficker named Joaquín Guzmán Loera and 22 underlings with creating a cocaine ring that stretched from Southern California to New Jersey.

Over the next two decades, as Guzmán’s infamy grew and he became known simply by his nickname – El Chapo, or “Shorty” – the U.S. authorities would charge him seven more times in courtrooms in New York City, Chicago, Miami and other cities where his sprawling drug network had wreaked havoc.

Prosecutors argued that his network moved hundreds of thousands of pounds of cocaine – worth billions of dollars – onto U.S. streets.

But despite multiple requests by the United States for Mexico to extradite him, the elusive fugitive still has never set foot in a U.S. courtroom.

With his capture in Mexico, however, that may change, as Mexican authorities signaled more strongly than ever this weekend that they might be willing to send him to the United States to face drug charges after his prison escape last summer. That escape humiliated Mexican authorities and raised questions about whether his incarceration there could be guaranteed.

The possibility of extradition sets up the prospect of one of the biggest federal trials in the United States in recent years. Guzmán would join a rogue’s gallery of drug and mob figures who have stood trial in a U.S. courtroom. Among them, Al Capone, convicted of tax evasion in Chicago in 1931; Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, the former dictator of Panama convicted on drug and racketeering charges in Miami in 1992; and James Bulger, known as Whitey, convicted of murder and racketeering in Boston in 2013.

For Mexico to agree to extradite Guzmán, the United States would most likely have to agree not to prosecute him on capital charges that could subject him to the death penalty. Mexico does not have a death penalty and, as a matter of policy, does not extradite defendants who could face it in another country.

With charges brought in numerous jurisdictions in the United States, another key question is where Guzmán would be tried. One possibility, officials said, would be to try him in the eastern district of New York in Brooklyn – not only because he was indicted there, but also because Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch was the U.S. attorney when the charges were brought.

And she would be the one to ultimately decide where he would be tried.

Initial charges in Brooklyn against Guzmán and several associates were brought in 2009. More recently, when Lynch was in charge of the office, prosecutors in Brooklyn consolidated the charges against him with another pending case in Florida.

Their joint indictment charged Guzmán and another suspected leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, Ismael Zambada García, with distributing more than 500 tons of cocaine in the United States since the late 1980s. It also charged them with distribution of heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana.

Prosecutors believe the cartel may have been the biggest supplier of cocaine to the New York City area for a decade or longer.

In their most recent indictment of Guzmán and García, prosecutors listed 163 separate counts of distribution of cocaine in the United States, ranging from 234 kilograms to as much as 23,000 kilos.

The indictment also said that leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel conspired to kill or arrange the killings of several people, including Mexican police and military officers and elected officials. They also conspired to have members of competing drug trafficking organizations killed, the indictment said.

Patrick McGeehan contributed reporting from New York.

This story was originally published January 10, 2016 at 11:58 AM with the headline "Mexican drug lord faces array of charges in US."