He spent years on the run in the mountains of Mexico, but a lawyer for Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman says her client has now gone 27 months without fresh air or sunlight.
The Sinaloa Cartel boss was found, in a marathon Brooklyn trial that ended in February, to have run a multibillion-dollar drug empire, ordering multiple murders along the way. Among those targeted, according to a key witness, was Stephen Tello, a former Toronto real estate agent said to have had a lucky escape from Guzman’s hit list .
But now, El Chapo’s legal team says the drug lord, who faces life without parole at a June 25 sentencing, is enduring inhumane conditions at New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center, or MCC. Described as a sort of Guantanamo Bay in Manhattan , the MCC is known for some of the harshest living quarters in the U.S. prison system.
Among the capo’s key demands? More water, more exercise and proper earplugs to help alleviate the “psychological scarring” he has suffered since being sent from Mexico to the U.S. in January 2017.
Speaking to the National Post, El Chapo’s lawyer Mariel Colon insisted that his rights, not his outrageous list of crimes, are what should most concern prison officials.
“Even those who have been convicted of the most heinous acts deserve not to have their most basic human rights violated,” she said. “Since (his extradition) he has not been able to see natural sunlight or breathe fresh air. He’s been inside. He’s been denied any outdoor privileges whatsoever.”
"When he stuffs toilet paper inside of his ear, it seems to help."
In a newly filed letter to Judge Brian Cogan, Colon asks that the Bureau of Prisons grant El Chapo at least two hours of outdoor recreation a week, as well as the ability to buy extra water bottles from the prison. She also wants to get him a set of earplugs to ease an ear ailment.
“It’s basic needs, that’s all we’re asking for,” said Colon. Her client has suffered “psychological and physical damage” from his time spent in an eight-foot-by-ten-foot cell, she said, adding that the air conditioning is too loud, and the lights are on 24/7. El Chapo gets just one hour of exercise (alone) from Monday to Friday, in a separate indoor cell that holds an exercise bike. On weekends, he isn’t allowed to work out at all.
Worn down by this alleged ill-treatment, Guzman has been making his own attempts at self-care, Colon said.
“He’s been having an ear pain that won’t go away,” she said. “When he stuffs toilet paper inside of his ear, it seems to help. We want the earplugs so that he can get a better night’s sleep.”
Colon says her client has only been granted 22 small water bottles in six months, but wants six bottles a week. The alternative is to chug from prison taps and dehydration, she says, could give him kidney stones.
“He is forced to drink from the faucet,” Colon told the Post. “He’s told me he can taste and smell the mildew. It’s a big problem — mold and mildew exposure causes a whole bunch of health issues. We’re asking for the bare minimum.”
El Chapo’s conditions in the prison’s Special Housing Unit, “violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment, as well as fundamental norms of human decency,” Colon’s letter to Judge Cogan says.
“The Supreme Court of the United States, and courts across the nation, have long recognized the importance of outdoor exercise for a prisoner’s health and well-being, and that unreasonable imposition of isolation violates constitutional rights,” Colon adds in the letter. El Chapo’s conduct, she writes, has been “exemplary,” and he has displayed “considerable grace under pressure.”
At the MCC, Guzman has always been kept away from the prison’s general population, but the U.S. government says this is necessary so that El Chapo can’t run his Sinaloa Cartel from Manhattan or, as he did in Mexico, escape. Colon says this is done for reasons of vengeance rather than security, and adds in her letter that Guzman, “has never been disrespectful, disruptive, or violent, towards any MCC staff member, and has never had a single write up.”
In a response filing, Judge Cogan has given the government until May 23 to reply to Colon’s claims.
In recent days Guzman fired one lawyer, Eduardo Balarezo, but has also been defended by New York attorney Jeffrey Lichtman. Lichtman is also representing Canadian truck company owner Mykhaylo Koretskyy, who is being extradited from Curacao to the U.S. to faces charges that he helped El Chapo to smuggle drugs worth millions into Canada.
Lichtman told the Post in recent days that Koretskyy is expected to fight the charges in New York.
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