MEXICO CITY (Sputnik) – The 13 arrested include Mexico’s former National Coordinator of Federal Social Rehabilitation Centers Celina Oseguera Parra and former Technical Director of the Altiplano prison where Guzman was held, the authorities said as cited by the El Debate newspaper on Friday.
El Chapo Guzman was jailed at the Altiplano maximum security prison in Mexico in February 2014. On July 11, El Chapo escaped using an underground tunnel that led from under his cell shower to a house construction site about 1.5 kilometers (0.9 miles) away.
Mexican Attorney General Arely Gomez has said that his country is ready to pay 60 million Mexican pesos (almost $4 million) for information on Guzman’s current whereabouts.
Earlier this month, a photograph presumably showing Guzman in Costa Rica circulated across social media. The image was released by a Twitter account linked to Jesus Alfredo Guzman Salazar, El Chapo’s son, and is dated August 26 with the pinned Twitter location saying Costa Rica.
El Chapo’s most recent escape is not the first one. In 2001, he escaped from a maximum security prison in Mexico’s Jalisco state, using a laundry cart.
Guzman is the chief of the Sinaloa drug cartel, named after the Mexican state of Sinaloa where it was formed. The criminal organization smuggles cocaine from Colombia through Mexico to the United States. The cartel is also involved in the production and distribution of Mexican marijuana, heroin and other drugs in North America and Europe. It is responsible for a major portion of drugs sold in the streets of the United States.
