“Mayo has been the largest narcotrafficker for decades in Mexico. He has never been arrested. He has paid hundreds of millions of dollars to stay free,” El Chapo’s lawyer Jeffrey Lichtman told the court on Tuesday.
This is while the lawyer asked the court not to charge his client on the basis of the “garbage” testimony of government witnesses. Litchman added that Mexican mobster Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman was merely a “scapegoat,” and that the real culprit in the drug trafficking operations was Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, the co-founder of El Chapo’s Sinaloa cartel.
61-year-old El-Chapo was charged guilty of crimes spanning a quarter of a century as head of one of the world’s most powerful drugs gangs. The hearing was done on Tuesday by a New York jury.
It involved 56 witnesses against El-Chapo, including former secretaries, pilots, cocaine suppliers, Guzman’s top trafficker, a manager, accountant, former communications chief, and even a former lover- most serving prison sentences hoping to have their penalties reduced in return for their cooperation with prosecutors.
This, over El-Chapo’s one witness. An FBI agent put on the stand in an attempt to undermine the credibility of one of Guzman’s cocaine suppliers who had testified against him.
The government meanwhile appealed to the jury not to let him escape following his history of jail breaks.
El-Chapo has escaped from prison in Mexico, one being an escape through a shower-tunnel in his cell.