El Chapo’s ride to freedom: First pictures of ‘motorbike on rails’ used by Mexican drugs lord in tunnel escape from prison that ‘he paid for with $50m in bribes’ 

• Photos show slim tunnel with oxygen pipes overhead and rails on ground
• 32-foot shaft leading to the tunnel from the prison's showers is also seen
• Holes were bored by the Sinaloa Cartel’s expert mining engineers
• They removed 3,250 tonnes of earth to create mile-long escape route
• Cartel leader Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman used it to flee on Saturday night

By Alasdair Baverstock In Mexico City and Imogen Calderwood For Mailonline

Published: 09:49 EST, 14 July 2015 | Updated: 21:49 EST, 14 July 2015

Astonishing pictures of the mile-long tunnel through which Sinaloa Cartel boss El Chapo made his escape from a maximum-security prison have emerged today.

The photographs show the tunnel's motorbike on wheels, ventilation pipes and a ladder in the shaft connecting the tunnel to the jail.

The motorbike, which was secured at its front wheel to the rails, was waiting for El Chapo as he descended into the tunnel from the prison shower block on Saturday night. 

It is believed he spent $50million on the elaborate underground escape route, which took his engineers around a year to complete. 

Scroll down for videos... 

Getaway vehicle: The first picture of the motorbike that Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman used to escape from the maximum-security Altiplano prison on Saturday

Getaway vehicle: The first picture of the motorbike that Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman used to escape from the maximum-security Altiplano prison on Saturday

The most recent image of drug lord Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman before he escaped from Altiplano prison

The slim tunnel, complete with oxygen-supply piping overhead, was bored by the Sinaloa Cartel’s expert mining engineers, using professional equipment. They would have had to remove more than 3,250 tonnes of earth.

Cartel leader El Chapo, who got his nickname ('The Shorty') from his 5ft 6ins stature, would have been able to stand up in the tunnel.

He prised open a grill in the prison showers, unnoticed by guards, before climbing down a 32ft shaft into the tunnel.

In a video interview, Pablo Escobar’s former chief henchman estimated that El Chapo’s escape would have cost in the region of $50million.

Speaking to news channel Univision, Escobar’s top gunman known as ‘Popeye’, said that tunnelling out of maximum security prison is very difficult without the complicity of at least some of the guards, who are equipped with highly sensitive sonar equipment that will pick up any mining activity.

Video reveals El Chapo's motorbike on rails and escape tunnel

Search continues: Soldiers and police inspect vehicles at a checkpoint on the road connecting Toluca with Mexico City today. The government has offered a $3.8million reward for the capture of Guzman

An armed soldier quizzes the driver of a pickup on the Toluca-Mexico City road, three days after Guzman fled

A boy stands next to a police car displaying a wanted poster of El Chapo at the checkpoint today

‘You have to buy off the guards if you want to have a chance’, said the cartel killer. ‘And they know how rich he is, they’ll have asked for tens of millions of dollars’.

‘El Chapo probably paid around 50 million in bribes alone’. 

More than 30 employees who worked at the prison have already been pulled in for questioning in the course of the interview.

Three prison system officials have been fired, including the prison director. 

And in a previous prison escape El Chapo had bribed prison guards to push him out of the Puente Grande maximum-security prison, in the western state of Jalisco, in a laundry cart.

A policeman with a dog patrols just outside Altiplano Federal Penitentiary in Almoloya de Juarez Tuesday

Officers search for clues near the prison on Tuesday - three days after drugs lord Guzman escaped

Escape: Henchmen working for El Chapo spent a year digging a tunnel, leading from the inside of the Altiplano prison showers to the Santa Juana construction site nearly a mile awyy

Detailed plan: The tunnel was a miracle of underground engineering, and came complete with ventilation, electric lights and a motorbike fitted to rails, to help remove the massive amounts of earth and on which El Chapo could make his getaway

Aerial shot: Satellite photos showing the area before and after El Chapo's escape, taken in February 2014 (left) and February 2015 (right) show the Santa Juana construction site

The Colombian said that while El Chapo may have escaped for the moment from the Mexican authorities, he won’t last long with the CIA and DEA on his tail.

‘Sooner or later he’ll be caught’, he said, ‘it’s not a matter of if, rather than when’. 

It came as Mexico’s judiciary and politicians came under scrutiny for their refusal to accede to US demands to extradite him, where he would have been kept in a supermax prison.

In the US he faced 35 charges including of cocaine and marijuana trafficking, organised crime and money laundering.

He faces charges from a number of federal tribunals, including in Illinois, New York, Florida, Texas, California and Arizona, given that the United States in the largest marketplace of the Sinaloa cartel. 

Mexican newspaper La Reforma reported that the US Attorney’s department had filed six separate extradition orders for El Chapo to the Mexican government. 

Following his arrest in February of last year the US immediately petitioned the Mexican government for his extradition. 

EL CHAPO - SET TO BE CHICAGO'S PUBLIC ENEMY NUMBER ONE ONCE AGAIN

Gangster: Al Capone held the title in the 1930s

Leader of the Sinaloa drug cartel, Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman is set to reclaim his title as Chicago’s public enemy number one.

Despite having been held in a maximum-security prison more than 2,000 miles away for more than a year, Chicago blames El Chapo and his cartel for the growing violent drug trade in the city.

The Chicago Crime Commission is expected to rename him as public enemy number one later today.

Only one other criminal has ever held the title, gangster Al Capone in the 1930s.

Guzman was initially named public enemy number one in 2012, although the Crime Commission removed the titled once he was again incarcerated in 2014.

Chicago is a hub for the Sinaloa cartel’s U.S. trafficking and distribution centres, through which it has made its mark on the North American drug trade.

‘The fact that El Chapo was able to get out of the most secure prison in Mexico positively convinces me that El Chapo should not be being held in Mexico,’ Arthur Bilek, the commission’s executive vice president, told the Chicago Sun Times on Sunday.

‘If the attorney general does not demand his return to the United States, the attorney general is not doing her job.’

The U.S. made a series of requests to extradite El Chapo to face criminal charges in the United States. 

Instead of ceding to the Americans’ wishes the Mexican president, who had been elected the year before on promises to bring down the country’s top cartel.

It’s the second time that El Chapo has escaped the clutches of the US justice system. His extradition was also imminent in 2001 when he escaped from the Puente Grande maximum security prison in the west of Mexico, hidden inside a laundry basket. 

The most recent formal request for his extradition came from the Obama administration in January, delivered to Mexico’s Ministry of the Exterior by the US Embassy in Mexico City. 

Despite 60% of Mexicans being in favour of his removal to the United States on the grounds that they feared he would escape again, according to polls taken shortly after his capture in 2014, Mexico’s Attorney General at the time, Jesus Murillo Karam, assured the country that the risk of his escape a second time ‘did not exist’.  

The Attorney General said that Mexico holding onto to Guzman was an issue of ‘National Sovereignty’, and joked that the US could have him once he had served his his Mexican sentence of ‘about 300 to 400 years’.

Under the previous Mexican administration of President Calderón a large amount of Mexican criminals were extradited to the United States, none of whom have since escaped from federal prison. 

Mexico offers $3.8m reward for capture of kingpin 'El Chapo'

Flight to safety: According to the El Blog Del Narco the man in the picture on the right is Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman and was taken less than two days after his brazen escape from jail in Mexico on Saturday

Relaxed: El Chapo is pictured here in another photograph which was released to the blog by his son. It is notable that he appears to be in public just hours after his prison break

Mexico's Attorney General tours site of Guzman escape

‘It was a ridiculous thing to do for the government to hold onto El Chapo’, security analyst Raul Benitez of the National Autonomous University in Mexico City told Forbes. 

‘Now they will pay the consequences’. 

Following the escape of America’s most wanted criminal the Mexican government has been left embarrassed. 

The administration has offered a reward of 60 million pesos (US$4 million) for his capture and delivery to the authorities.

But given El Chapo’s status as one of the world’s richest men, who commands a private army that promises death to any traitor, as well as the influence of corrupt officials throughout the Mexican administration, the government’s bounty has been described by many as little more than a token gesture. 

The director of the maximum security penitentiary has been sacked, although Mexican Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong has refused to step down from his post, telling the media, ‘times of crisis such as this are not times to resign, rather to stand up and face them   

Threats: Following his escape from prison, Guzman brazenly tweets Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, telling him he is going to make him eat his words

Following El Chapo’s capture last year Mr Chong was personally charged with overseeing the drug kingpin’s safe detention by Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto.

Presidential candidate Donald Trump, who was personally threatened over Twitter by the fugitive for his strident views over immigration from Mexico, who told him he would ‘make him eat his words’, took to social media to complain about the Mexican authorities.

‘Mexicos totally corrupt gov’t looks horrible with El Chapo’s escape – totally corrupt’, he told his 3.2 million followers. 

Mexico has offered a reward of $3.8million for his capture, while Mexican security forces continue to search for the fugitive with the help of neighbouring countries, including the U.S.

HOW DID HE DO IT? JOAQUIN 'EL CHAPO' GUZMAN'S GREAT ESCAPE 

The billionaire leader of the Sinaloa drug cartel began his escape at 8.52pm on Saturday, when he entered the showers at the Altiplano maximum-security prison, 50 miles outside of Mexico City.

The drug kingpin prised open a 50cm by 50cm grill in the shower floor, and climbed down a 32ft shaft into the complex tunnel system that his henchmen had spent the last year digging underneath the feet of the prison guards. 

Inside the tunnel was electric lighting, a ventilation system and a motorbike waiting to carry him to freedom.

Hidden exit: The end of the tunnel leading from the prison showers to the Santa Juana construction site, through which El Chapo made his escape

Baffled: Authorities look into the entrance to a secret tunnel through which Guzman is believed to had fled. He used the tunnel to travel the 0.9miles between the prison and the Santa Juana construction site. Once there, he was able to take his time, using the bathroom and collecting a change of clothes, before disappearing once again

Inconspicuous: Pictured is the interior of the home through which Guzman fled. Clothes and a phone charger could be seen inside

The 0.9mile tunnel led directly from underneath the prison showers to the Santa Juana construction site, just outside of the prison perimeters. 

Waiting for him here was a ramshackle building, with just two bedrooms, a cellar, and a change of clothes for the crime lord.

And El Chapo had everything he needed to disappear into the Mexican countryside once again, for the second time in 15 years. 

But the plan took incredibly detailed, exact planning from the group of four highly-skilled engineers, trusted with the liberation of their leader. 

They had acquired blueprints of the prison, and worked a gruelling 10 hour a day schedule for almost an entire year before the tunnel was complete.

The tunnel was no small feat of engineering. It was 0.9miles long, 5ft6in high, and 2ft3in wide. 

Overall, the team had to shift more than 3,250 tonnes of earth from under the very noses of the prison officials. 

The operation would have required 379 dump trucks in total, carrying tens of thousands of bags of earth. 

But incredibly, nothing was ever reported.   

Mystery: Police officers search the tunnel through which El Chapo made his escape from the Altiplano maximum-security prison

Ramshackle: A half-constructed house concealed the site where El Chapo's henchmen began digging the tunnel a year ago

Sprawling: The Altiplano Federal Penitentiary complex in Almoloya de Juarez, is just 50 miles outside of the nation's capital Mexico City

A couple who live next to the end of El Chapo's escape tunnel have revealed how a mysterious neighbour who called himself 'El Pastor' moved into the area six months ago and claimed he was building a house. 

Lorenzo Esquivel and Maria Esther Salgado, live a mile from the Altiplano jail in the town of Almoloya de Juarez.

The couple told how the man moved into the grey, brink building at the start of this year, before embarking on a series of building works.

They said the man – who they described as tall, portly and in his 50s – would often ferry material to and from the site in his red 4x4 and a white pick-up truck.

The man introduced himself as El Pastor – meaning the Shepherd – the couple told MailOnline.

'He definitely wasn't from around here but he was always very friendly,' they said.

'He told us he was building a new house on the property but we never saw any exterior changes.'

On Saturday, the day El Chapo made his escape, the couple described seeing two 'very luxury black 4x4s' also arrive at the property.

They saw the cars drive away again the following morning, along with El Pastor's two vehicles. 

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