Off the wire
• U.S. may release Israeli spy Pollard from prison soon: report  • 5.3-magnitude quake jolts Indian-controlled Kashmir  • Record high temperatures continue to bake parts of Xinjiang  • Major shareholders accused of selling stakes under investigation  • U.S. looking to stir up chaos in LatAm: Venezuelan president  • Vietnam's defense minister returns home with "stable" health condition: state news agency  • Chinese IT giant Inspur to set up plants in California  • Xinhua China news advisory -- July 25  • Beijing 2022 bid delegation leaves for Kuala Lumpur  • W.African bank to raise 500 mln USDs to enhance regional integration  
You are here: 　 Home

Mexican prison workers remanded in custody on suspicion of helping drug lord escape

Xinhua, July 25, 2015 Adjust font size:

A Mexican judge has remanded three prison workers in custody for allegedly helping drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera escape from a maximum security prison on July 11, the Federal Judicial Council (CJF) said on Friday.

After gathering statements from seven civil servants arrested for their alleged connection with the case, Judge Leonardo Gonzalez Martinez told CJF that he considered three of them facilitated the escape of the Sinaloa Cartel's leader. Gonzalez Martinez is a judge for the Third District Court in Criminal Matters located in Guanajuato state in central Mexico.

The cartel leader was given strategical and logistical information about the prison, which allowed for the construction of a highly sophisticated 1,500-meter-long tunnel, Gonzalez Martinez said.

On July 17, an arrest warrant was originally issued against seven civil servants by the Fourth District Court in Criminal Matters in the state of Mexico in South-Central Mexico.

Judge Gonzalez Martinez said sufficient evidence points to the probable responsibility of three of them in helping Guzman Loera escape from the Federal Social Readaptation Center No. 1 ("Altiplano") in the state of Mexico.

The three remanded in custody include a prison worker in charge of the control center and two prison guards. The control center worker was inconsistent in his statements, and the guards did not answer the telephone within the prison unit shortly after the escape had occurred.

The three are being kept in the Federal Social Readaptation Center No. 12 in Guanajuato state.

Judge Gonzalez Martinez decided that for the moment, there is no proof that directly links the other four arrested to the escape.

The Mexican Attorney General's Office said the Public Prosecutor's Office would continue investigating and would act against anyone involved in the escape.

Guzman Loera has been the most wanted man in the world since the night of July 11 when he successfully escaped through a hole in the shower area of his cell in the state of Mexico prison. This was the drug lord's second escape from a maximum-security prison in Mexico.

The infamous cartel kingpin had managed to escape with the help of prison officers in 2014, after he was arrested in the port-town of Mazatlan in the northeastern state of Sinaloa, and was imprisoned in the Latin American country with an extradition order from the United States.

The Mexican government says that it will spare no expense to locate the drug trafficker.

A reward of 60 million Mexican pesos (about 4 million U.S. dollars) will be offered to anyone who can provide any information that could lead to the cartel leader's recapture.

The government has also asked international police force Interpol to help with the recapture. Endi