Mexican drug lord 'El Chapo' faces charges in US court

Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, one of the world's most notorious criminals, appears before a US court on Friday to answer drug trafficking, firearms and conspiracy charges that could see him jailed for life. Extradited by Mexico on Thursday, he was flown to Long Island where he arrived after nightfall to be transported under a heavily armed escort to New York, where his arraignment will take place in a federal court in Brooklyn. Prosecutors hailed his extradition as a milestone in US efforts to bring the 59-year-old drug baron to justice, rushing out the announcement in the final hours before Donald Trump takes the oath of office as president. It caps a Hollywood-worthy cat-and-mouse game between authorities and the slippery drug lord, who escaped spectacularly from prison twice -- in a laundry cart in 2001 and through a tunnel under his shower in 2015. His feats turned him into a legend of Mexico's underworld, with musicians singing his praises in folk ballads, but his cartel controlled a massive international drugs distribution network and presided over deadly turf wars. "He's a man known for no other life than a life of crime, violence, death and destruction and now he'll have to answer to that," US Attorney Robert Capers told a news conference in New York on Friday. US prosecutors say Guzman's Sinaloa cartel is responsible for distributing hundreds of thousands of kilos of heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana throughout the United States, reaping billions of dollars in profits. He will be arraigned on a sweeping 17-count indictment that includes criminal enterprise dating back decades from 1989 to 2014, drug importation, illegal use of firearms and money laundering conspiracy, Capers said. Homeland Security Special Agent Angel Melendez gave a dramatic account of Guzman's arrival at MacArthur Airport the night before and US authorities have stressed that Guzman will have no means of escaping a US prison. - Life behind bars - If convicted he faces life behind bars in an American prison. Prosecutors are also seeking to obtain a $14 billion criminal forfeiture order against him. "As he deplaned, as you looked into his eyes, you could see the surprise, you could see the shock and to a certain extent you could see the fear... that he is about to face American justice," Melendez said. "I assure you no tunnel will be built leading into his bathroom," he added. The drug baron, whom US prosecutors said was known to carry a gold-plated AK-47 assault rifle and a diamond-encrusted handgun, had fought against extradition since being recaptured last January following his second jailbreak. President Enrique Pena Nieto previously refused to extradite Guzman, but changed his mind after the drug lord's latest escape in July 2015. The Mexican foreign ministry said Thursday that he was handed over to the Americans after Mexican courts rejected his latest appeals against extradition. But questions have also been raised over the timing. Trump, who takes office on Friday, has publicly clashed with Mexico over trade and immigration issues and has pledged to build a wall on the US-Mexican border. One of Guzman's lawyers, Silvia Delgado, told Milenio television that she was surprised, calling the extradition "illegal" with another petition pending. But Alberto Elias Beltran, Mexico's deputy attorney general for international affairs, denied it was politically motivated and said that the government does not intervene in judicial rulings. Capers traced a criminal career that saw Guzman fend off competition from Colombian cartels and eventually oversee a drug trafficking network from the Pacific to the Atlantic, keeping "an army of hitmen at the ready" to protect his empire. - Cancerous tumor - He tied Guzman's criminal activities to the drugs epidemics that turned Miami and New York into "ground zero" in the 1980s and 1990s. In all, Guzman is charged in six indictments throughout the United States, and the Mexican foreign ministry had also approved extradition bids from California and Texas. "Guzman's destructive and murderous rise as an international narcotics trafficker, is akin to that of a small cancerous tumor that metastasized and grew into a full blown scourge that for decades littered the streets of Mexico with the casualties of violent drug wars," Capers said. Guzman was first captured in Guatemala in 1993, only to escape from a maximum-security prison in 2001. Mexican marines backed by the US Drug Enforcement Administration arrested him in 2014 in the Sinaloa resort of Mazatlan, where he was staying with his wife and twin daughters. But he escaped again just 17 months later. His henchmen dug a 1.5-kilometer (one-mile) tunnel that opened into his cell's shower at the Altiplano prison near Mexico City, allowing him to slip out and flee on a remodeled motorbike that was fitted on tracks. Guzman was recaptured in January 2016. Authorities said they tracked him down after Guzman held a clandestine meeting with US actor Sean Penn and Mexican-American actress Kate del Castillo, with whom he exchanged flirtatious text messages. His trial is expected to last weeks and involve multiple witnesses, although it was not immediately clear whether Penn would be one of them.