A judge in the northern state of Chihuahua ruled in Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman after he filed a complaint over obtaining an extra blanket © AFP/File / Alfredo Estrella
Mexico City, Mexico, Dec 15 – Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman has felt so cold in his prison cell that he sought — and won — a court order to get an extra blanket.
A judge in the northern state of Chihuahua ruled in Guzman’s favor after he filed a complaint last week, one of his lawyers, Silvia Delgado, told AFP on Wednesday.
“We were granted the (court order) because his individual rights were attacked. He had one very thin blanket, but last night he was given another one,” Delgado said.
Guzman was abruptly transferred in May from a penitentiary in central Mexico to a prison in Ciudad Juarez, a northern city bordering the United States where temperatures can sink below freezing at night.
The Sinaloa drug cartel leader has complained about his treatment in prison ever since he was recaptured in January.
Authorities have applied special security measures to keep Guzman from pulling another prison escape, posting guards and cameras facing his cell. He broke out of jail in 2001 and 2015.
In July 2015, he slipped out through a 1.5-kilometer (one-mile) tunnel that opened into his cell’s shower at the Altiplano maximum-security prison near Mexico City.
After his capture, he was returned to the Altiplano, where he complained that guards were waking him up in the middle of the night and dogs tasted his food to test whether it was poisoned.
His wife, former beauty queen Emma Coronel, issued a complaint at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington.
But Guzman’s next home may be a top-security prison in the United States.
The foreign ministry has approved his extradition, which a judge approved in October. Guzman’s lawyers have appealed to a higher court but the government hopes to extradite him by February.
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