The hole that led the world's most wanted man to freedom... again: How Mexico's billion-dollar drug lord escaped down prison shower block tunnel where motorbike, lights and oxygen tanks were waiting for him
- Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman, head of powerful Sinaloa Cartel, is on the run
- He fled through an elaborate tunnel network - that boasted its own motorbike on rails and even an electricity supply
- At least 18 prison workers were quickly detained over the escape
- Armed police are searching a house believed to be at the end of tunnel
- Flights have been cancelled in Mexico as part of the massive manhunt
- Guzman fled a jail in 2001 with help of guards by hiding in laundry basket
- His fortune is estimated at more than $1billion, according to Forbes magazine
This is the hole through which Mexico's most notorious drug lord escaped from a maximum security prison for the second time - using it to flee through an elaborate network of tunnels underneath his cell.
Joaquin 'El Chapo' 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.
The 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.
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Baffled: Authorities look into the entrance to a secret tunnel through which Guzman is believed to had fled
On the run: Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman, pictured in a mugshot last year, fled from his prison last night
Heavily concealed: The alleged end of the tunnel through which Mexican drug lord Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman could have escaped from the Altiplano prison
Break for freedom: Guzman escaped from the maximum-security prison on Sunday. This was his second jail break in 14 years
Inconspicuous: Pictured is the interior of the home through which Guzman fled. Clothes and a phone charger could be seen inside
Escape gear? This box of clothes was also pictured at the half-constructed property
Crime scene tape is placed around another hole near the house he is thought to have escaped into
Federal police check a house at the end of the tunnel through which he could have escaped
This picture shows how close the house (left) is to the Altiplano maximum security prison in Almoloya (right)
Officers search huge construction pipes on the large building site next to the prison on Sunday
Bedding can be seen in one of the pipes being inspected by police. It is not known who put the blankets there
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.
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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.
Mexico's National Security Commissioner Monte Alejandro Rubido at the press conference today
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.
'This is going to be a massive black eye for Pena Nieto's administration,' said Mike Vigil, former head of global operations for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
'I don't think they took into account the cunning of Chapo Guzman and the unlimited resources he has. If Chapo Guzman is able to make it back to the mountainous terrain that he knows so well in the state of Sinaloa ... he may never be captured again.'
Beneath a 50-cm by 50-cm hole in the cell's shower area, guards found a ladder descending some 32 feet into the tunnel, which was about 5.6 feet high and 28-31 inches wide.
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.
Outside the Altiplano lockup, and at the deserted property where Guzman surfaced, security forces barred reporters, while guards arrived for the day shift and encountered a prison in lockdown, wondering whether to stay or go home.
After the launch of a massive manhunt for Guzman, Mexican President Pena Nieto ordered an investigation into whether public officials had helped the capo escape.
'There's no doubt this is an affront to the Mexican state, but I have confidence that the institutions ... can recapture this criminal,' he said in a statement from Paris.
The escape comes after Guzman's son, Ivan 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’.
However, his @IvanArchivaldo account has since been suspended.
The tweets also come after Authorities admitted they had already investigated a strange prison visit to Guzman in March, when a woman managed to see him by using a fake ID to enter the jail.
According to Vice, Guzman enjoyed special privileges inside the prison - including private audiences with his visitors - while other inmates had a tougher time.
At a press conference today, Mr Rubido said said that Guzman used an elaborate escape hatch built allegedly without the detection of authorities.
'Along the tunnel, they found construction tools, oxygen tanks, containers with fuel and plastic tubes among other things. The passage came out at a construction site.'
He did not comment on why authorities had apparently failed to notice a long tunnel being built under the prison.
Rubido added that 18 workers from various parts of the Altiplano penitentiary had been taken in for interrogation.
A convoy of federal police was seen guarding a prison truck believed to taking the staff from the jail - which is 56 miles west of Mexico City - to the Attorney General's office in the capital.
Flights were suspended at Toluca airport near the penitentiary in the State of Mexico, and civil aviation hangars were being searched.
Notorious: Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman, pictured after his last arrest in 2014, has escaped from a maximum security prison in Mexico. The drugs kingspin is head of the powerful Sinaloa Cartel
Massive search: A convoy of federal police guard a prison van travelling through Mexico City on Sunday. It is believed to hold some of the 18 prison officials who have been taken in for questioning
Federal police officers stand guard outside the prison. The huge construction site next to it can be seen
Armed: Policemen outside the jail in central Mexico on Sunday. A huge manhunt is under way
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.
His escape is a major embarrassment to the administration of Mexico's president Enrique Pena Nieto, which had received plaudits for its aggressive approach to top drug lords. Since the government took office in late 2012, authorities have captured or killed six of them, including Guzman.
Pena Nieto, speaking in France where he is making an official visit, said of the escape: 'This represents without a doubt an affront to the Mexican state.
'But I also have confidence in the institutions of the Mexican state ... that they have the strength and determination to recapture this criminal.'
U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said in a statement Sunday: 'The U.S. government stands ready to work with our Mexican partners to provide any assistance that may help support his swift recapture.'
Mexico's president Enrique Pena Nieto, who is in France, addressed reporters on Sunday afternoon
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 racists 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.
He has made his anti-Mexican rhetoric a mainstay of his run for president.
Last escape: Guzman was listed as 'public enemy number one' after he fled from a prison in 2001. This poster lists his height as 5ft 8in, although he is believed to be 5ft 6in, hence his nickname 'The Shorty'
Guzman is listed among the 'World's Most Powerful People' by Forbes magazine, which ranked him above the presidents of France and Venezuela
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.
Policemen search for the drug lord outside Altiplano prison in Almoloya de Juarez on Sunday
Sprawling: The Altiplano Federal Penitentiary in Almoloya de Juarez on the outskirts of Mexico City
Public security forces search a construction site right next to the barbed wire of the prison on Saturday night
Soldiers set up checkpoints and searched vehicles on the highway between Mexico City and Toluca
A policeman inspects a public bus being driven outside Altiplano Federal Penitentiary last night
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.
THE BEAUTY QUEEN WIFE AND MOTHER TO HIS TWIN DAUGHTERS
Emma Coronel, Guzman's wife and mother to his twin daughters
Emma Coronel is either Guzman's third or fourth wife and they were married in 2011 when she was just 18-years-old. She caught his eye after winning the Miss Coffee and Guava beauty contest.
Coronel, who is the daughter of one of Guzman's top deputies, Ines Coronel Barreas, was last seen re-entering Mexico in August 2011.
The then 22-year-old had just given birth to Guzman's twin daughters at Antelope Valley Hospital in Lancaster, north of Los Angeles, California.
Because Coronel is both an American and Mexican citizen - she is allowed to travel freely between the two countries.
Guzman was caught with an unidentified woman when he was captured following his first escape, but his young wife was unaccounted for.
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.
Before security forces captured him, they went on a several-day chase through Culiacan, the capital of his home Sinaloa state, for which the cartel is named.
They found houses with steel-enforced doors and elaborate tunnels - where Guzman had apparently been staying - that allowed him to escape through the sewer system.
Earlier this year, the then Mexican Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam said that sending Guzman to the US, where he is wanted, would save Mexico a lot of money, but keeping him there was a question of national sovereignty.
Murillo Karam dismissed concerns that Guzman would escape a second time. That risk 'does not exist', he said. Murillo Karam has since been replaced by Arely Gomez.
Mexican president Pena Nieto is currently in France for a state visit. He is expected to make a statement later today.
It is believed he will not be cutting short his trip, but his Interior Secretary Miguel Angel Osorio Chong - the Cabinet's head of security - will return to Mexico from France.
In 1993, gunmen linked to the Tijuana-based Arrellano Felix cartel attempted to assassinate Guzman at the Guadalajara airport but instead killed Roman Catholic Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo - leading to outrage among Mexicans.
Guzman was rumored to have once entered a restaurant in Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa state, where his henchmen confiscated every patron's cellphone so their boss could eat without fear of an ambush.
He was also reported to have staged an elaborate public wedding in 2007 to an 18-year-old bride, which was attended by officials and local police.
Federal police say they raided the town that day but got there just a few hours too late.
Guzman was known to move around frequently, using private aircraft, bulletproof SUVs and even all-terrain vehicles.
Old playbook: When Guzman was last caught he was also using tunnels to evade capture - such as those pictured above
Going underground: Pioctured is A interconnected tunnel in a Culiacan drainage system which Guzman used to hide
His location was part of Mexican folklore, with rumors circulating of him being everywhere from Guatemala to almost every corner of Mexico, especially its 'Golden Triangle', a mountainous, marijuana-growing region straddling the northern states of Sinaloa, Durango and Chihuahua.
An archbishop in northern Durango state said in April 2009 that Guzman lived in a town nearby. Days later, investigators found the bodies of two slain army lieutenants with the note: 'Neither the government nor priests can handle El Chapo.'
Reactions in the U.S. to Guzman's escape ranged from disbelief to outrage, with some observers saying it dramatically illustrated the need for captured cartel kingpins to be promptly extradited to the U.S.
A former administrator of the Drug Enforcement Agency said: 'It is a shock that the most dangerous cartel leader in the world has escaped. He ought to have been housed in an American prison.'
Washington's official response was diplomatic, as Attorney General Loretta Lynch said in a statement Sunday that the U.S. shared 'Mexico's concern regarding the escape' and stood by to help in the manhunt.
But one Mexico expert said American officials likely expressed more frustration behind the scenes.
'I think this will add to the distrust many U.S. agencies feel - even if that's not publicly voiced,' said David Shirk, San Diego-based fellow for the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
At least some observers said they weren't surprised by Guzman's escape given Mexican prisons' reputation, including Gal Pissetzky, a defense attorney who has represented suspected drug trafficker in U.S. courts nationwide.
'I'm surprised he stayed locked up in there as long as he did,' Pissetzky said.
Last time: Pictured are Mexican security forces bundling Guzman into a helicopter after his capture in February 2014. Authorities said there was no chance he would escape again
Wanted: Guzman is facing charges in the U.S., but Mexico was adamant that it would keep him in the country rather than handing him over
The Chicago Crime Commission, an influential crime-fighting group in Illinois, said Sunday that the prison break meant Guzman will regain his title as Public Enemy No. 1 in Chicago, where his Sinaloa cartel has long dominated the cocaine and heroin trade.
When the group attached the Public Enemy label to Guzman a year before his capture, it was the first time it had been used since it was applied in 1930 to Prohibition-era gangster Al Capone. The Chicago Crime Commission planned to formally restore the title to Guzman this week, said John Pastuovic, a spokesman for the non-governmental body.
Several U.S. attorneys' offices have indicted Guzman on trafficking charges, including in Chicago, where several Guzman lieutenants were successfully extradited, prosecuted and imprisoned. The U.S. had said after Guzman's 2014 capture that it would file an extradition request, though it's unclear if that already happened.
Search goes on: Mexican soldiers check a coach at a tollbooth of Mexico-Toluca highway, in Mexico City
Wild terrain: View of the Altiplano maximum security prison in Almoloya, west of Mexico City
For its part, Mexico's government at the time denied the need to extradite Guzman even as many expressed fears he would inevitably escape. He had escaped before, in 2001, while serving a 20-year sentence in another maximum-security prison in Mexico.
That air of self-confidence among Mexican authorities will be harder to maintain if and when Mexico recaptures Guzman or nabs some other cartel leader, Shirk said.
'The calls for extradition (to the U.S.) will be more intense' in the wake of Guzman's escape, he said. 'It'll be more difficult for the Mexican government to say, 'No, no. We have this under control.''
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