Chronicle Editor
After nearly three months of testimony about a vast drug-smuggling conspiracy steeped in violence, a jury is due to begin deliberations on Monday at the US trial of the infamous Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.
A federal judge in Brooklyn is set to give instructions to jurors in the morning before asking them to begin deciding the verdict for 61-year-old Guzman, who faces life in prison.
Throughout the months-long trial, the jury has heard more than 200 hours of testimony about Guzman’s rise to power as the head of the Sinaloa cartel.
Prosecutors say he’s responsible for smuggling at least 200 tonnes of cocaine into the US and a wave of killings in turf wars with other cartels.
The 11-week trial, which featured testimony from more than 50 witnesses, offered the public an unprecedented look into the inner workings of the cartel, named for the state in northwest Mexico where Guzman was born in a poor mountain village.
Prosecutors said he trafficked tons of cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamine into the United States over more than two decades, consolidating his power in Mexico through murders and wars with rival cartels.
The defence has argued that Chapo was set up as a “fall guy” by Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, a drug kingpin from Sinaloa who remains at large.
The most detailed evidence against Guzman came from more than a dozen former associates who struck deals to cooperate with US prosecutors.
Through them, jurors heard how the Sinaloa Cartel gained power amid the shifting allegiances of the Mexican drug trade in the 1990s, eventually coming to control almost the entire Pacific coast of Mexico.
They heard how Guzman made a name for himself in the 1980s as “El Rapido”, the speedy one, by building cross-border tunnels that allowed him to move cocaine from Mexico into the United States faster than anyone else.
— Al Jazeera.
Online Reporter