Handcuffed Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman is made to face the press as he is escorted to a helicopter by Mexican soldiers and marines at a federal hangar in Mexico City. Mexico’s most notorious cartel kingpin who twice made brazen prison escapes and spent years on the run as the country’s most wanted man, was extradited to the United States on Thursday, Jan. 19, 2017, to face drug trafficking and other charges. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo, File)

Notorious Mexican drug lord “El Chapo” raped children he called “vitamins”, according to claims by witnesses in newly unsealed documents.

According to papers made public late on Friday, a key government co-operator told authorities that Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman made him drug girls as young as 13 before the drug lord raped them at one of his Mexican hideouts in the late 2000s.

El Chapo’s lawyers called the accusations “extremely salacious” and questioned the timing of the government filing, which comes as a jury is about to start deliberating in his US drug-trafficking case.

The infamous drugs lord “denies the allegations, which lack any corroboration and were deemed too prejudicial and unreliable to be admitted at trial”, Eduardo Balarezo said in a statement.

“It is unfortunate that the material was publicly released just prior to the jury beginning deliberations.”

The jury is set to begin deliberations on Monday after a nearly three-month trial on charges that as the head of the Sinaloa cartel, Guzman oversaw a drug-smuggling empire that flooded the US market with at least 200 tons (181 metric tons) of cocaine and made 14 billion dollars (£10.7 billion) from it.

The defence says co-operating witnesses have made El Chapo a scapegoat for their own crimes.





El Chapo has been accused of sleeping with underage girls

The unsealing of the documents came at the request of The New York Times and Vice News.

US District Judge Brian Cogan had ordered prosecutors to review the material – originally sealed because it was deemed unrelated to the drug charges – and make portions of it public within four days after the government rested its case against El Chapo.

One document says Colombian drug trafficker Alex Cifuentes, while living with El Chapo around 2007, told investigators someone known as Comadre Maria would offer photos of young girls to El Chapo.

For 5,000 dollars (£3,800), the girl of El Chapo’s choice would be sent to a secluded Sinaloa ranch, Cifuentes said, according to the papers.

El Chapo instructed Cifuentes to put a “powdery substance” into the girls’ drinks before sex, said Cifuentes.

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El Chapo “called the youngest of the girls his ‘vitamins’ because he believed that sex with young girls gave him ‘life'”, he added.

Cifuentes also admitted having sex with minors but without drugging them.

The document says other co-operating witnesses have backed up the claims about El Chapo’s interactions with underage girls.

Mexican drug trafficker Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera, seen here after his capture in 2014, is on trial in New York

The documents also describe an interview with El Chapo conducted by a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent in 1998 at a Mexican prison where Guzman escaped two years later.

They say he allegedly asked if he could avoid extradition to the United States if he provided information to the DEA about the drug-running operations of rival cartels.