El Chapo’s wife off the hook over ‘secret’ message allegations
The wife of Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman has dodged allegations she was secretly communicating with her husband in court, as more details of the drug baron’s lavish lifestyle were revealed.
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The US trial of Mexican drug baron Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman hit a roadblock over allegations that his beauty queen wife had access to a banned mobile phone and was using it to communicate with her husband.
Prosecutors demanded that the judge punish the defence for lending Emma Coronel a telephone, but he accepted explanations that she had used it for translation purposes only and deferred until next week any decision on sanctions.
In 15-page and heavily redacted document, the US government accused the 29-year-old of using a mobile phone to communicate via one of the defence lawyers with her husband, from whom she is banned from any direct contact.
Guzman is subjected to the strictest inmate security protocols in the United States, after twice escaping from prison in Mexico and has been held in solitary confinement since being extradited to New York in January 2017.
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Judge Brian Cogan, who is presiding over the trial, has taken the security precautions so seriously that he prohibited the couple from embracing before opening statements began on November 13.
Prosecutors complained that Coronel had access to a phone last week, but earlier today the judge ruled that, as she no longer did, the issue of sanctions would be addressed “sometime next week.”
Lawyers are the only people permitted to take mobile phones into the Brooklyn federal court house where 61-year-old Guzman is on trial. Coronel was said to be using the phone while sitting next to a lawyer in the cafeteria.
On Monday, lawyers twice objected to the judge and the defense that Coronel -- the mother of Guzman’s seven-year-old twin daughters -- had been using a mobile phone inside the court house.
Prosecutors fear that not only could she be using the device to communicate with her husband, but to film a protected witness whose security they have sought to shield at all costs.
Guzman is accused of smuggling drugs into the United States over a quarter of a century, and is likely to spend the rest of his life behind bars in a maximum security US jail if convicted.
EL CHAPO ‘SO RICH’ HE HAD A PRIVATE ZOO
A government witness has been testifying about the lavish spending habits of the Mexican drug lord.
Former cartel member Miguel Angel Martinez told a jury in New York that the “cocaine boom” of the early 1990s made Guzman so wealthy that he had a private zoo at his ranch in Guadalajara.
The witness says Guzman bought a $US10 million ($A13 million) beach house in Acapulco. He also said the defendant once traveled to Switzerland for an anti-aging treatment. Guzman has pleaded not guilty to drug-trafficking charges. He says he’s being framed.
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