El Chapo trial: Joaquín Guzman joked about arming infant daughter with AK47 in texts to wife, court hears
Trial of Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzman is expected to last four months
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Your support makes all the difference.The trial of notorious drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo“ Guzman continues in Brooklyn, New York, and is expected to last into early 2019.
This is the first time a major Mexican drug lord has been tried in a US court and pleaded not guilty. The trial has become increasingly tense in recent days, as Guzman’s attorney seeks to undermine testimonies from major drug traffickers.
Guzman, 61, faces a 17 count indictment that covers nearly three decades of alleged criminal activities. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Follow updates form the trial as they happened
Agencies contributed to this report
The Chapo trial has resumed Thursday morning with explosive new revelations arriving in the form of a secretly-recorded phone call featuring the kingpin himself.
Chapo is heard in the call negotiating a cocaine deal with the FARC Colombian guerrillas, requesting to pay for two tons of the six-ton package and adding the other four tons on credit.
Jorge Milton Cifuentes-Villa has continued his testimony Thursday morning after revealing the extent of his relationship with Chapo.
Jorge was one of the drug lord’s Colombian cocaine suppliers, who flew to the mountainside of the country to celebrate when Chapo escaped from prison in 2001.
In the secretly-recorded phone call between Chapo and a member of the FARC Colombian guerrillas, the drug lord can be heard haggling over the price and requesting for a “technician” to review the cocaine shipment before he were to send over a $50,000 advance.
The two eventually agree on a rate of $100 a kilo for the FARC member to deliver the cocaine from Colombia to Guayaquil, Ecuador.
More from the secretly-recorded phone call:
Jurors heard Chapo discussing the process of moving the cocaine shipments from Columbia to Guayaquil, while demanding a technician review the upcoming shipment as he had previously been displeased by the quality of past shipments.
Jorge revealed the cartels allegedly paid off officials with the Ecuadorian army so they could safely deliver cocaine shipments to the warehouse in Ecuador.
Jorge has testified he was nervous Chapo would kill his brother Alex if anything were to go wrong with the deal jurors heard discussed in a secretly-recorded phone call.
They had previously somehow lost 14 tons of cocaine in the past two shipments, and Jorge had put his property up as collateral for four of the tons of cocaine.
The deal was eventually called off, though Jorge never learned whether Chapo received the two tons of cocaine he had agreed to pay in cash.
El Chapo’s attorney will cross-examine Jorge Milton Cifuentes-Villa after the mid-morning break.
El Chapo’s wife, Emma Coronel Aisupuro, opened up about her relationship with the drug kingpin in a rare 30-minute interview with Telemundo, saying she believed the “media has overexposed him.”
“I feel people created an image of him, and they want that image to remain in the public's consciousness. It's the image that sells. So when someone says he's a humble and simple man, they don't like to hear that.”
She went on to say she’s confident about Chapo’s future and excited to one day “be calm, to be somewhere in the world where we can be at ease,” adding, “I don’t dream of big things.”
Vice News reporter Keegan Hamilton tweeted a photo of one of the helicopters Jorge said he bought for Chapo, which he said was “very quiet and good for the mountains.”
Chapo appeared to take notes during portions of Jorge’s testimony, even leaning over to speak with his attorneys. Reporters in the room suggested he appeared to be rejecting the claims made by Jorge throughout his testimony.
The secretly-recorded tape of Chapo discussing cocaine shipments is likely to be among the most damning and foundational evidence to be used against the drug kingpin in his ongoing trial.
It remains unclear who recorded the phone call and how it was done without scrutiny.
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