Posted on July 13, 2015

‘I’m Going to Make You Eat Your Words’: Mexico’s Billion-Dollar Drugs Lord Threatens Donald Trump on Twitter

Alasdair Baverstock and Ollie Gillman, Daily Mail, July 13, 2015

Mexico’s billion dollar drugs lord known as ‘El Chapo’ has gloated on Twitter about his escape from a maximum security jail by taunting authorities and threatening US-presidential hopeful Donald Trump.

Joaquin Guzman, billionaire head of the powerful Sinaloa Cartel, made his jail break on Saturday morning and is on the run from Altiplano jail, 50 miles outside of Mexico City, security officials said.

His audacious escape saw him dash through the mile-long tunnel system, which led to a building under construction next to the prison–from where he collected clothes left for him by his conspirators.

But following his escape he took to Twitter and used it to hit back at Trump, who has said that Guzman embodies ‘everything that is wrong with Mexico’ and added he would ‘kick his ass’.

On the account, administered by Guzman’s son Ivan, the escapee reportedly wrote: ‘If you keep p****** me off I’m going to make you eat your words you f****** blonde milk-s*****’.

In Mexico, a milk-s****** is a homophobic slur.

The property magnate is taking the threat seriously.

According to TMZ the billionaire has called in the FBI to investigate the source of the Twitter account which warned Trump he would be sorry he spoke out against Mexico.

He also took aim at the Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto saying: ”And you @EPN, don’t call me a delinquent because I give people work unlike you you cowardly politician.’

The drugs lord’s account became particularly active yesterday, when many believe it was Guzman himself sending messages of victory and threatening his enemies with gruesome death.

He also posted: ‘Never say never, this world keeps turning. In this life, he who risks nothing cannot win’.

He followed up with ‘There’s no jail for such a big midget’ as El Chapo means midget in Spanish as Guzman measures only five foot six inches tall.

He also started calling death threats on those who have supposedly betrayed him, including El Chabelo, the current incarcerated boss of Sinaloa’s rival cartel the Zetas.

Guzman wrote: ‘First to die is El Chabelo, for wanting to see me die in prison.’

He then hinted that the authorities had been complicit in the jailbreak by posting: ‘The dog (slang for the Mexican government) dances for money, and I’ve bought it.’

During his last escape, Guzman hired the help of the prison guards during his first successful escape from maximum security prison, in which he was hidden inside a laundry basket.

The drugs lord made his latest escape on Saturday through a sophisticated tunnel contained air vents, electric lights, emergency oxygen tanks–and even a motorbike on rails to speed his escape, according to Mexico’s National Security Commissioner Monte Alejandro Rubido.

The kingpin exited the tunnel where it ended at an abandoned property near the local town, Rubido told a news conference on Sunday.

The escape comes after Guzman’s son, Ivan also hinted about his father’s plans for a daring escape from online earlier this month.

He put up a post on the social network saying ‘good things come to those who wait’.

Earlier still, on May 8, the Sinaloa Cartel heir published an emotional pledge to his followers.

He posted: ‘I won’t lie, I have cried but I bring armed men and I promise that soon the General will be back’.

Local media have now began questioning how no-one saw 3,250 tonnes of earth that was removed to construct a tunnel a mile long, 80 centimetres wide, and 1.7 metres tall. 2,652 cubic metres of earth would have to be removed, enough to fill 379 dump trucks.

The prison staff are equipped with radar and electronic depth testing equipment which they are required to use regularly specifically in order to check for things like tunnels but nothing was ever reported.

Guzman, who had bribed his way out of prison during an escape in 2001, was seen on video entering his shower area at 8:52 p.m. on Saturday, the National Security Commission (CNS) said.

The Sinaloa cartel has a long history of tunnel building, particularly along the US border where they were used to smuggle narcotics into America, and in his home state of Sinaloa, where subterranean structures still hide weapons.

The cartel has an engineering division, less notorious than the organisation’s armed factions, but equally vital in their ongoing operations.

Five days before his capture El Chapo fled from a military operation aimed at his capture through a tunnel in his mansion connected to the city’s storm drains.

The tunnel was located below a bathtub, which raised itself vertically by the flick of a switch, revealing escape tunnels.

The same device was found in seven of the 19 separate houses belonging to El Chapo which the government seized following his capture.

Wanted by U.S. prosecutors and once featured in the Forbes list of billionaires, Guzman was gone by the time guards entered his cell in Altiplano prison in central Mexico, the CNS said.

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Prison workers were quickly detained over the escape.

Rubido said 18 officials from the penitentiary were being interrogated at the unit specializing in organized crime at the Attorney General’s office.

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Guzman–whose nickname El Chapo (‘The Shorty’) is a reference to his height of 5ft 6ins–runs a drug empire that stretches across North America and into Europe and Australia.

His latest escape comes just 16 months after he was captured following more than a decade on the run. He currently faces federal drug trafficking indictments in the U.S.

After Guzman was arrested on Feb. 22, 2014, the U.S. said it would file an extradition request, though it’s not clear if that happened.

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Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump, who is mired in controversy following his recent comments that Mexican immigrants are ‘drug traffickers and rapists’, tried to make political capital from the escape with a contentious tweet.

‘Mexico’s biggest drug lord escapes from jail. Unbelievable corruption and USA is paying the price. I told you so!’ he wrote on Twitter.

Trump has previously riled Mexicans by calling illegal immigrants from the country rapists and thieves, whom the government was ‘pushing’ across the southern border on purpose because they are ‘cunning’ and American leaders are ‘dumb’.

At a speech yesterday in Phoenix, Arizona, he unveiled an outlandish plan to fine Mexican authorities $100,000 for every immigrants who crosses the border without proper documentation.

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Guzman’s cartel, Sinaloa, has been heavily involved in the bloody drug war that has torn through parts of Mexico for the last decade, taking an estimated 100,000 lives. It is believed to control most of the major crossing points for drugs at the US border with Mexico.

If he is not captured immediately, Guzman will likely be back in full command and control of the Sinaloa cartel in 48 hours, said Michael S. Vigil, a retired U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration chief of international operations.

‘We may never find him again,’ he added. ‘All the accolades that Mexico has received in their counterdrug efforts will be erased by this one event.’

During Guzman’s previous years as a fugitive, he transformed himself from a lowly middleman into arguably the most powerful drug trafficker in the world–and he was placed on the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s most-wanted list.

His fortune is estimated at more than $1billion, according to Forbes magazine–which listed him among the ‘World’s Most Powerful People’ and ranked him above the presidents of France and Venezuela.

Guzman was caught by authorities for the first time in Guatemala in 1993, then he was extradited and sentenced to 20 years in prison in Mexico for murder and drug trafficking.

He escaped from another maximum security prison, Puente Grande in western Jalisco state, in 2001 with the help of prison guards.

He hid in a laundry cart to make his getaway, but there are several theories as to how he got out.

Guzman is known for his ability to pay off local residents and even authorities, who tipped him off to security operations launched for his capture.

He was finally tracked down to a modest beachside high-rise in the Pacific Coast resort city of Mazatlan in February 2014, where he had been hiding with his beauty-queen wife and twin daughters.

Emma Coronel, who was born in California, is a U.S. citizen, which means she has the right to live in the United States. Her father was also a drug lord who died in a shoot-out with the Mexican army.

She was sent to California to give birth so that her daughters would be U.S. citizens too. Federal agents wanted to stop her, but had no formal charges to file so had to let her go free.

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