A lawyer for Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, Mexico’s most deadliest drug kingpin, dismissed prosecutors’ talks that he might attempt to escape from the Manhattan prison where he awaits sentencing saying that he drinking water, sunlight and fresh air should be accessible because they “are basic human rights.”
Guzman’s attorney Mariel Colon Miro told Fox News on Monday, “Mr. Guzman has not had any access to natural sunlight or fresh air for more than 2 years now since he has been extradited to the United States.”
“It’s concerning because our country prides itself of being respectful of human rights yet the U.S. government is not doing it for Mr. Guzman.”
On May 9th, Colon Miro said that she filed a motion for Guzman’s conditions of confinement in Manhattan’s Metropolitan Correctional Center on May 9th asking that her client would be allowed a minimum of 2 hours of outdoor exercise a week, 6 water bottles a week that he would be allowed to purchase from the correctional facility’s commissary as well as eaay reach to a general commissary list, and that he would be allowed to access a set of earplugs to help him sleep.
She said on May 23rd that the government filed a reply requesting Brian Cogan, United States District Judge to deny all 4 of his requests saying that he should not be allowed to exercise outdoors because of the risk that Guzman, who broke out of Mexican prisons twice, might try to escape again.
Prosecutors also recalled a failed attempt in 1981 to escape the same jail, in which a prisoner’s accomplices hijacked a sightseeing helicopter and tried to cut through the wire screening surrounding the recreation area. When that was unsuccessful, prosecutors said, they rammed the helicopter into the screen and then dropped a pistol to one of the inmates on the roof. The incident, even though it was foiled, “resulted in a standoff between two armed inmates and more than 100 armed, flak-jacketed police officers and prison guards in a population dense, urban area,” the government response stated.
The response said “any outdoor exercise would be particularly problematic for this defendant” who “successfully planned and executed elaborate escapes from two high-security penal institutions.”
This Sunday, Colon Miro said that she filed a response to the government’s reply asking the Brooklyn federal judge to grant Guzman’s requests explaining that an attempted escape was “completely different” from the example supplied in the government reply. She said that Guzman should be granted outdoor access especially because he is not allowed to communicate with anyone but his lawyers and, therefore, is in no position to try a similar escape.
Judge Cogan sided with the government and denied all the requests in an order filed Monday saying the “defendant’s conditions of confinement are tailored to his specific history, including two prior prison escapes, and his specific crimes, including previously running the Sinaloa Cartel from prison and engaging in multiple murder conspiracies to kill his enemies, which were proven beyond a reasonable doubt at trial.”