Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto has written in his Twitter account that fugitive drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman has been recaptured seven months after he escaped from a maximum security prison.
House in Sinaloa, Mexico, where Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman was staying, Friday, Jan. 8, 2016. MEXICAN ARMY
Responding to what was seen as one of the biggest embarrassments of his administration - Guzman's July 11 escape through a tunnel from Mexico's highest-security prison - Pena Nieto wrote in his Twitter account on Friday: "mission accomplished: we have him."
Benjamin Bergman, a spokesman for the Mexican marines, said El Chapo was rearrested after a shootout with Mexican marines in the city of Los Mochis, in Guzman's home state of Sinaloa early Friday. He said Guzman was in "good condition."
Five people have been killed and one Mexican marine wounded in the clash. The Mexican Navy said in a statement that marines acting on a tip raided a home in the town of Los Mochis before dawn. They were fired on from inside the structure. Five suspects were killed and six others arrested. The marine's injuries were not life threatening.
Some of the firearms confiscated inside El Chapo's house in Sinaloa, Mexico, after his capture on Friday, Jan. 8, 2016. MEXICAN ARMY
At the home marines seized two armored vehicles, eight long guns, one handgun and a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.
A Mexican photographer on the scene described the scene to CBS News deputy foreign editor Ana Real.
Photographer Ismael Aguirre, who had been on the scene there since 3 a.m., said armed helicopters were flying over city, a middle class neighborhood, about 20 meters above the houses. This was because El Chapo's men were trying to escape from their house to find refuge in other private houses. Kids were asked not to go to school as the fight continued for many hours, Aguirre said.
Helicopters were from the Mexican marines special forces. When El Chapo and his guards men heard the helicopters, they went into the city sewer pipes, Aguirre said. Marines were lifting the lids of sewer systems in the streets to find them.
El Chapo ran for a while in the sewer system before getting out, where a car was waiting for him. He was taken to the Doux hotel where he checked in. Marines arrested him at the hotel, after the people fighting in the house confessed that his back-up plan was to end up at that hotel, Aguirre said.
The details of his arrest Friday are just the latest twists and turns of the El Chapo saga.
In July 2015, in a scheme befitting a crime novel, Guzman escaped from a maximum security prison through a one-mile tunnelthat opened into the shower area of his cell.
The elaborate, ventilated escape hatch built allegedly without the detection of authorities allowed Guzman to do what Mexican officials promised would never happen after his re-capture last year -- slip out of one of the country's most secure penitentiaries for the second time.
Authorities said Guzman went to the shower and escaped through a two-by-two foot opening in the floor, using a ladder to climb down into an elaborate 5 foot-tall tunnel, built 30 feet underground, that led to a construction site, about a mile south of the prison.
U.S. law enforcement agencies have been eager for Guzman's arrest.
Last July, the Chicago crime commission weighed in on the Mexican manhunt for Guzman.
Topic: World most dangerous Billionaire drug dealer El Chapo re-arrested in Mexico (Read 1438 times)
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October 10, 2016, 08:35:56 PM