Newly released footage shows Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán washing his face, being questioned, and telling Mexican authorities his cartel would not attempt a prison break.
Mexican newspaper El Universal published four edited videos showing Guzmán shortly after he and his bodyguard, Orso Iván “El Cholo Iván” Gastelum, were captured after emerging from a manhole in Los Mochis, Sinaloa, on Jan. 8, 2016. The footage offers a rare glimpse of the feared cartel boss in the immediate aftermath of his capture and before his eventual extradition to the US.
In one video, El Chapo could be heard asking for soap before a police officer placed his hands under a dispenser. He then asks the cop, “It won’t bother my eyes?” “It’s better not to get it in your eyes,” the police officer replied, before telling him he had permission to remove his mud-soaked tank top.
Fearing that Sinaloa Cartel members would attempt to track them down, the cops brought El Chapo and Gastelum to a hotel while waiting for backup to arrive before transporting them to a military hangar in Mexico City. In a second video, a haggard and handcuffed El Chapo could be seen sitting in the back of a vehicle and responding, “No,” when asked if they had mistreated him.
Once in Mexico City, El Chapo was grilled by the military and admitted to “dedicating myself to growing marijuana, trafficking since I was young, but not stealing,” according to the footage.
Most strikingly in a third video, the Sinaloa Cartel co-founder assured the military that his squad of assassins had been warned not to launch a rescue operation in the event he was captured. “It is not convenient for me that people fight with the government,” El Chapo said. “I have told them — this has an end, if one day I fail, I don’t want them to fight with any police, not at all. No, there will be no war, not at all. I am sure that there will be no war.”
El Chapo’s line of thinking stood in stark contrast to the tactics his criminal organization employed Oct. 17, 2019, when cartel members set roadblocks, burned vehicles and carried out a war-like assault to secure the release of his son. Ovidio Guzmán López was briefly detained at his home in Culiacán, Sinaloa as part of a US extradition request before then-Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador ordered his release.
In a fourth video, El Chapo and Gastelum could be seen sitting in an airplane with their heads covered.
In the viral moment that preceded these newly published videos, El Chapo had been on the run for six months following his dramatic July 2015 escape from Altiplano prison through a 1.5-kilometer tunnel dug to his cell. Mexican authorities conducted an intensive manhunt, and his recapture in Los Mochis involved a shootout that left five suspected cartel members dead and one Mexican Navy officer wounded. The operation, known as “Black Swan,” ended with Guzmán and Gastelum fleeing through a sewer system before being apprehended.
El Chapo was extradited to the US on Jan. 19, 2017 and was convicted by a federal court in Brooklyn on Feb. 12, 2019. He was sentenced to life in prison and is currently being held at ADX Florence, a supermaximum security penitentiary in Florence, Colorado.