Are The Feds Trying to Drive El Chapo Insane?
He doesn't even know what time it is
Attorneys for Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, the notorious drug lord who’s twice escaped from captivity, have filed court documents asking that the cartel kingpin be transferred to general population at Metropolitan Correctional Center, the federal prison in downtown Manhattan where he’s currently being held. It’s the same jail that housed Gambino crime family boss John Gotti and 1993 World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Ahmed Yousef.
El Chapo was extradited to the U.S. from Mexico in January and now faces a 17-count international drug-trafficking case. He had previously escaped a prison in Mexico via underground tunnels he ordered constructed and a custom built motorcycle.
El Chapo has been in solitary confinement since his extradition and his attorneys are claiming that spending 23 hours in a windowless cell is starting to have serious psychological effects on their client. He’s not allowed to talk to or be visited by his wife, and conversations with his attorneys are limited and monitored.
According to court documents, El Chapo is only permitted one hour of solitary exercise in a cell that contains a treadmill and a stationary bicycle (better than that motorbike he rode to freedom through a secret underground tunnel a few years ago). He’s never allowed outside—except for when a motorcade escorts him to and from court—and his only means of telling the difference between night and day is a clock that he purchased. That clock, however, was taken from his cell without explanation.
According to the filed documents, the lights inside his cell are always on and he isn’t given proper clothing to keep warm.
At a hearing last month his attorneys argued that he was sometimes even denied drinking water. During that same hearing, U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan said that Guzman’s case is “complex and unusual,” and he would “defer security arrangements to the Justice Department and the Metropolitan Correctional Center.”
El Chapo’s attorney later told reporters that giving him a glass of water wasn’t going to “to effectuate his escape.”
Speaking of El Chapo, here’s a song by 2 Chainz:
