A jury has found drug kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán guilty of drug trafficking, weapons charges and money laundering, a verdict that means he will face life in prison at his sentencing. The leader of Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel has been in American custody since early 2017.
The decision came Tuesday, February 12th, after nearly three months of testimony from a wide assortment of former associates and underlings of Guzmán, who walked jurors through more than 30 years of the drug lord’s career as a trafficker, describing smuggling routes, wars with rival cartels, bribery and a handful of brutal murders ordered, and in some case committed, by the defendant.
Guzmán, 61, was found guilty on all charges. The top count, which carries a life sentence, was running in a continuing criminal enterprise, a wide-ranging charge that includes conspiracy to traffick drugs and conspiracy to commit murder. Count two was for manufacture and distribution of cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and marijuana, while counts three through seven were for importation or distribution of cocaine. Count nine was for use of firearms, and count 10 was for laundering the vast profits the cartel made from drug trafficking.
The jury, consisting of seven women and five men, deliberated for 35 hours over five and a half days before returning with a verdict.
El Chapo remained stoic as Judge Brian M. Cogan read the jury’s verdict, and stared in the direction of the jury when Cogan, at the request of the defense team, quizzed each juror one by one if the all-count guilty verdict reflected their vote. One by one, they replied yes.
Read the rest here: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/el-chapo-joaquin-guzman-gulty-trial-789577/
Yep, just another CIA “drug lord patsy,” and if you think I’m joking, let me tell ya about a passed-on friend who worked for DEA until he retired in mid-90s being disgusted by the DEA’s own drug-muling ops under CIA guidance, and how did he know the CIA ran the whole op? Because the CIA asked him to help run “Air America” which was the CIA’s Vietnam War drug-muling op which also involved Kum Sa of Myanmar…China White and all that. Why do you think “the govt.” is allowing all those MS-13 thugs into the US? Uh, maybe it’s because the US gov.-CIA helped found and fund MS-13? (Well, if Israel could help found and fund Hamas…)