A US jury has found Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán guilty in a major drug-trafficking trial, court officials have confirmed.
Guzman, 61, is charged with 10 criminal counts, including drug trafficking and engaging in a criminal enterprise as leader of Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel.
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The judge has thanked the jury for their verdict, saying, “The way you went about it was really quite remarkable and frankly it made me proud to be an American."
Jurors were reportedly forced to provide their personal affirmations to the verdict after defence asked the judge to confirm the accuracy of the guilty charge.
The jurors avoided eye contact but each quickly said “yes” when asked whether the guilty verdict was accurate.
El Chapo was a notorious drug kingpin and escape artist who managed to repeatedly break away from authorities. He will now spend the rest of his life in a maximum security prison.
Below is video from Vox on how the drug lord managed to evade being captured over the years:
Mexico’s most notorious drug lord, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, was convicted Tuesday of running an industrial-scale smuggling operation after a three-month trial packed with Hollywood-style tales of grisly killings, political payoffs, cocaine hidden in jalapeno cans, jewel-encrusted guns and a naked escape with his mistress through a tunnel.
Guzman faced a drumbeat of drug-trafficking and conspiracy convictions that could put the 61-year-old escape artist behind bars for decades in a maximum-security US prison selected to thwart another one of the breakouts that embarrassed his native country.
New York jurors whose identities were kept secret reached a verdict after deliberating six days in the expansive case, sorting through what authorities called an “avalanche” of evidence gathered since the late 1980s that Guzman and his murderous Sinaloa drug cartel made billions in profits by smuggling tons of cocaine, heroin, meth and marijuana into the US.
AP
“The jury found the defence guilty on all counts,” a communications official for the US courthouse where El Chapo’s trial took place has confirmed to The Independent.
El Chapo will serve a mandatory sentence of life with no chance of parole in a federal prison, officials have confirmed, after the kingpin was found guilty on all counts against him.
El Chapo, who spent his day in a cell while awaiting a verdict from the jury, appeared “stunned” as the verdict was read.
VICE’s Keegan Hamilton says Chapo “locked eyes with his wife Emma Coronel as he was being escorted out of the courtroom and nodded at her several times.”
“She was fighting back tears as she flashed him a thumbs up,” the reporter added.
El Chapo has reportedly been found guilty on all charges.
El Chapo was charged with 10 criminal counts of drug trafficking and engaging in a criminal enterprise. He led Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel, which has been accused of trafficking tons of drugs across borders to the US, including heroin, marijuana, cocaine and methamphetamines.
Jurors are expected to deliver their decision momentarily. They were provided 200 hours of testimony, at least 60 pages of instructions and entire boxes of evidence against drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.
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