This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán could face the rest of his life in a US prison and have $14bn of his drug-trafficking profits seized by American authorities, US prosecutors said on Friday, a day after the cartel kingpin was extradited from Mexico to stand trial in New York.

During a brief hearing at the Brooklyn federal court, Guzmán pleaded not guilty to charges that he lead a vast and murderous criminal operation that distributed 200 tons of cocaine for sale on American streets.

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Wearing a dark blue prison smock and trousers, blue tennis shoes and a light brown T-shirt, Guzmán shuffled into court with his hands behind his back looking subdued.

Speaking quietly through a translator, he told judge James Orenstein that he understood the charges against him and the rights he had as a defendant.

“Si, señor,” he repeated, in reply to Orenstein’s questions.

He declined to apply for bail.

Unveiling a 17-count indictment against Guzmán at a press conference on Friday morning, Robert Capers, the US attorney for the eastern district of New York, said Guzmán would be forced to answer for a “life of crime, violence, death and destruction” as the head of the Sinaloa cartel.



“Guzmán’s story is not one of a do-gooder, or a Robin Hood, or an escape artist,” said Capers, referring to Guzmán’s record of twice fleeing Mexican prisons. Instead, said Capers, “Guzmán’s rise was akin to that of a small cancerous tumour that metastasized into a full-blown scourge”.

Capers said that in addition to decades of drug trafficking, Guzmán had maintained an army of hitmen to commit murders in defence of his network, amassed a military-style arsenal of weapons, and personally carried a gold-plated AK-47 rifle and diamond-encrusted handgun.

Standing alongside 20 officials from agencies including the FBI, NYPD, the Department of Homeland Security and the Drug Enforcement Administration, Capers said his announcement was the culmination of more than a decade of investigative work by multiple American authorities.

Guzmán was flown into the US on a Mexican law enforcement plane late on Thursday. Officials said that after landing at MacArthur airport on Long Island, he was driven in a 13-vehicle motorcade to the metropolitan correction center in Manhattan, before being moved to Brooklyn at 7am on Friday.

Special agent Angel Melendez, of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said that for Guzmán “the realisation began to kick in that he was about to face American justice” upon his transfer to the country, which several officials said had taken the US government by surprise on Thursday.

“As he deplaned, the most notorious criminal of modern times, as you looked into his eyes you could see the surprise, you could see the shock, and to a certain extent you could see the fear,” said Melendez.

Amid speculation that Guzmán’s extradition was a parting gift from Mexico to the Obama administration, or even an early peace offering to incoming US president Donald Trump, Capers declined to comment on whether the timing had political significance.

Officials also would not comment on where Guzmán would be detained and on extra precautions being taken to guard the capo, who twice absconded from high-security prisons in Mexico – most recently through a sophisticated underground passageway which led from his cell bathroom.

Melendez said to laughter that “no tunnel will be built leading to his bathroom”. “What occurred in other countries will not occur here,” said Capers.

Following his second escape in 2015, Guzmán was recaptured in a seedy motel in the city of Los Mochis after federal agents trailed the actor Sean Penn to a clandestine meeting with the fugitive kingpin.

A 56-page memo filed to court by US authorities on Friday said that prosecutors plan to use at trial “a large coterie of cooperating witnesses”, including dozens of people who claim to have had face-to-face dealings with Guzmán and US-based drug distributors who were supplied by the Sinaloa cartel.

One witness is expected to testify about Guzmán’s use of assassins against his rivals, “including his use of a house specially outfitted for murdering victims”, the court filing said. “The house had plastic sheets over the walls to catch spouting blood and a drain in the floor to facilitate the draining of blood.”

Other witnesses are said to be prepared to testify about “specific murders carried out under Guzmán’s orders” including the killing of the cocaine trafficker Julio Beltrán, as well as Guzmán’s payment of bribes to Mexican politicians and law enforcement officials.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Prosecutors present their case against Joaquín Guzmán to reporters during a news conference in US federal court in Brooklyn, New York, on Friday. Photograph: Jason Szenes/EPA

Physical evidence, such as ledgers from Colombian drug cartel bosses detailing agreements with Guzmán, would also be used against him, according to the memo, along with intercepted electronic surveillance of Guzmán and “numerous physical surveillances” in the US and other countries.

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Authorities requested that Guzmán be detained pending his trial due to the severity of the allegations against him, the threat he posed to the public, and the risk that he would flee the country.

Guzmán faces a mandatory life sentence if convicted. Prosecutors said in the indictment that the US also intends to seek the forfeiture of at least $14bn in money and property from Guzmán.

Capers confirmed that in order to extradite Guzmán, Mexico had required that there was no possibility he would face the death penalty. The Guardian disclosed last year that the US had quietly removed specific murder charges against Guzmán from his charge sheet.

A grand jury indictment first filed in Brooklyn in September 2014, when the outgoing US attorney general, Loretta Lynch, was the district’s top federal prosecutor, had charged Guzmán and an ally with 12 murders that were carried out in Mexico between 2000 and 2008, along with two attempted murders and multiple murder conspiracies against rival cartels.