Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán wants to accelerate his extradition to the United States, saying he can no longer tolerate the conditions in the prison he escaped from in July 2015, but was returned to in early January.

José Refugio Rodríguez, a lawyer for the drug lord, told Mexican media on Wednesday that his client had instructed him to broker a deal with US officials in exchange for better prison conditions in a medium-security facility and a lighter sentence – though, at 61, it is likely the head of the Sinaloa cartel will still live out his life behind bars.



“I spoke with him and he asked me, he pleaded with me to look for the quickest way possible of processing extradition because he can no longer stand the situation he’s experiencing,” said Rodríguez in comments published by the newspaper Reforma.

The request for rapid extradition is a reversal for Guzmán, whose lawyers have filed a string of applications for injunctions known as “amparos” which would prevent him from being sent abroad. Guzmán’s two previous escapes – from a Guadalajara prison in 2001, when he was wheeled out in a laundry cart, and last July through a tunnel measuring more than a mile long – were both hastened by a fear of extraditions.



Mexico’s attorney general’s office released a statement in January saying the extradition process was under way, but has warned that it could take up to a year.

Guzmán has found prison life unbearable since being placed under a strict new security regime, Rodríguez said, adding that his client is unable to sleep as prison guards wake Guzmán every few hours to ensure he hasn’t escaped again.

The lawyer said he did not expect a quick extradition, however.

“Unfortunately, the business is not like going to buy a car,” he said. “This takes time and needs time and I ask myself, ‘Is there enough time for Joaquín to leave here alive and make it to the United States?”



Guzmán’s wife, Emma Coronel, has complained of conditions inside the Altiplano prison, to the west of Mexico City. She alleged in an interview with Telemundo that he was being “tortured”, suffering from high blood pressure and given no privacy – “not even to go to the bathroom”. (Guzmán escaped through a small shaft connecting his shower with a tunnel.)



In testimony from Guzmán obtained by the Associated Press in February, the jailed drug boss accused prison authorities of torturing him “by waking him up”, and said, “I feel like a sleepwalker.”



“My head and my ears always hurt and I feel bad all over,” Guzmán said in the document.

The testimony also revealed the relatively lax conditions Guzmán had previously enjoyed. Guzmán said that before his escape he had been granted a four-hour conjugal visit and a four-hour family visit every nine days, and was allowed an hour and a half with his lawyer every day, and an hour outside.

Authorities don’t deny they have restricted Guzmán’s privileges, though security commissioner Renato Sales told reporters, “He’s sleeping perfectly. There is no violation, I insist, of his fundamental rights.”



Sales pointed out that Guzmán has escaped twice from Mexican prisons.

“Shouldn’t someone who twice escaped from maximum security prisons be subject to special security measures? The commonsense answer is yes,” Sales said.

Mexican marines recaptured Guzmán on 8 January in the coastal city of Los Mochis in his home state of Sinaloa. His apparent infatuation with actress Kate del Castillo, who was in talks to produce a biopic of his life, put Mexican officials on his trail, according to leaked intelligence files and instant messages leaked to the Mexican media.

Guzmán boasted of the breadth of his criminal empire – and the variety of drugs it trafficked – in the interview, though that came as news to his wife.



“He is not the most powerful capo in the world,” she said, contradicting local lore in Sinaloa. “But the government made him the most wanted capo in the world perhaps to hide more important things.”

