CAPTURED (AFTER 13 YEARS)
By CASTO CANDO
The operation that culminated in the capture of Joaquín Guzmán Loera, alias El Chapo Guzmán, was the result of an unprecedented effort that took several months to prepare, consisting of the participation of special forces agents from Mexico and the United States, hundreds of tapped telephone calls, dozens of hired killers arrested and sophisticated satellite monitoring equipment.
In addition to the elite unit of the Mexican Navy, which led the capture along with the participation of Mexico’s Office of the Attorney General (PGR), at least three U.S. government agencies were intimately involved in the operations: the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), the U.S. Marshalls Service and Homeland Security.
Additionally, U.S. State Department diplomats lent their decisive support in Washington as well as at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City, thus maintaining the communications flow between both governments, according to sources consulted by Univision.
In a joint task force, the DEA and the U.S. Marshalls Service agreed to train a select group of some 200 men who made up the elite unit of the Mexican Navy, and their sole objective was to capture the kingpin from Sinaloa.
The DEA experts and the U.S. Marshalls worked closely together with the Mexican Navy commanders, thanks to this military entity’s willingness to cooperate with military and intelligence forces from other countries, in contrast with the more secretive Mexican Army.
The Mexican marines were trained in special forces operations, and worked in absolute secrecy, keeping strictly classified all information about its operations dealing with tracking and capturing.
Crucial ICE information
DEA agents provided the Mexican Navy with valuable intelligence information obtained during interrogations of drug traffickers captured in the United States.
Nevertheless, it was information furnished to the Mexican Government by Homeland Security’s Office of Immigration and Customs Inspection (ICE) that provided the key to capturing Guzman.
Nevertheless, it was information furnished to the Mexican Government by Homeland Security’s Office of Immigration and Customs Inspection (ICE) that provided the key to capturing Guzmán.
The information provided by the U.S. federal agencies, which included calls and contacts made by cellular telephones during the previous months by members of the Sinaloa Cartel, was used by the Mexican Navy in carrying out operations and gathering more information about the movements and whereabouts of El Chapo throughout Sinaloa, first in Culiacán and finally in Mazatlán.
One of the key sources of information turned out to be Serafín Zambada-Ortiz, one of the sons of Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, an integral leader of the Sinaloa Cartel and considered to be a close ally of Guzmán.
El Chapo Guzman on a Navy helicopter after his arrest.
Raids in Sinaloa
In November of 2013 border patrol officers had detained Zambada-Ortiz while he was trying to cross from Mexico to Nogales, Arizona in order to attend an immigration hearing concerning his wife’s application to legalize her immigration status, according to AP.
The arrest of Serafín, accused of conspiring to smuggle methamphetamines and cocaine into San Diego, was the result of a complex investigation that immigration authorities had been conducting concerning persons who were likely cooperating with the Sinaloa Cartel on U.S. territory, with help coming from hundreds of phone lines that had been tapped.
After this arrest, a series of events unfolded which kept Mayo Zambada in check and steered the special forces onto the trail leading to the capture of El Chapo.
In December, Zambada’s right hand man was assassinated during a four-hour sustained attack conducted by the Mexican Navy aimed at a mansion where he was hiding at the Puerto Peñasco resort on the Gulf of California.
A few days later, the Dutch police arrested another man from Zambada’s intimate circle as he arrived at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, inbound from Mexico.
With the intelligence information gathered during the interrogations of the captured suspects, the details leaked by the informants and new voice data from tapped telephones, the security entities from the United States and Mexico began to realize that El Chapo Guzmán had abandoned the safety of the mountains and was venturing into urban centers such as Culiacán and Mazatlán.
“He got tired up living up in the mountains and not being able to enjoy the comforts of the rich life,” stated Michael Vigil, a former director of the DEA who knew the details of the operation. “That was a fatal error,” he noted, according to AP.
The clearest signs that the capture of El Chapo could become reality emerged on 12 February 2014. In the predawn hours of that day, a convoy of Mexican Navy troops surrounded a home in the community of La Vista Country Club in Puebla, where they found Danilo Fernández de la Vega, presumed to be a collaborator of the Sinaloa Cartel. The capture of Fernández turned out to be a crucial element in the capture of the kingpin.
After the arrest, the authorities confiscated firearms and more than a dozen cellphones Fernández used in his dealings with the cartel. The numbers contained in those cellphones belonged to the group of bodyguards that were closest to El Mayo Zambada, an associate of El Chapo.
Miramar condo building in Mazatlán, Sinaloa.
On the following day, 13 February 2014, Mexican authorities detained a man known as “Number 19,” considered to be the new leader of Zambada’s hired killers, and who was travelling with two other men along a coast highway heading toward Mazatlán.
Three days later another man, age 43, with the nickname of “20,” head of security for El Mayo, was captured while transporting a shipment of 4,000 cucumbers and bananas stuffed with cocaine.
The telephone information provided by Fernández’s cellphones led the Mexican Navy to the capture of other members of the Sinaloa Cartel during three raids in the mountains of Sinaloa and then in the city of Culiacán. In addition to weapons, money and chemical reagents, they confiscated more telephones that had information that was even more crucial.
El Chapo’s telephone
In each of the arrests, the Mexican agents made it clear that the operations were directed at the capture of El Mayo Zambada, and not El Chapo Guzmán. The true nature of the operations was never leaked, according to what The New York Times reported.
The mother of all evidence was finally in the hands of the obstinate pursuers: one of the telephones captured in the raids contained the number of a satellite telephone that was used by El Chapo Guzmán, according to assurances by one of the arrested men.
They immediately began to monitor the satellite calls in order to locate the whereabouts of El Chapo, while high-level Mexican government officials, as well as U.S. officials, fine-tuned the details for launching the final assault.
At a military base near El Cabo, at the southern tip of the Baja Peninsula, a short distance from Mazatlán as well as the rest of Sinaloa, a contingent of special forces from the Mexican Navy joined together with a group of DEA agents with the objective of commencing a systematic operation in search of the kingpin in Culiacán.
SPECIAL FORCES FROM THE MEXICAN NAVY JOINED TOGETHER WITH A GROUP OF DEA AGENTS IN SEARCH OF EL CHAPO.
Following the lead of one of El Chapo’s captured bodyguards, on 20 February, the commando group raided the house of Griselda López, Guzmán’s ex-wife. When they finally succeeded in tearing down the heavy steel-reinforced door that blocked the entrance to the house, the authorities realized it was too late and that the kingpin had most likely escaped. But they found an unexpected lead: a secret door underneath the bathtub led them to an underground network of tunnels and sewers that led to six other houses in the neighborhood, each with a heavy steel door.
“He made it so that the minutes we wasted trying to open the doors enabled his escape through the tunnels,” stated prosecutor Jesús Murillo Karam, who was part of the investigations. “But the investigation was so solid we continued,” he noted, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal.
The final assault
Around 6 o’clock on the afternoon of Friday the 21st, the Mexican marines and the DEA began their move again: they had intercepted a telephone call from a satellite telephone belonging to Guzmán indicating he was in Mazatlán, about 120 miles from Culiacán.
THE BIGGEST SURPRISE WAS NOT FINDING AN ARSENAL OF HIGH-CALIBER WEAPONS INTENDED TO PROTECT THE KINGPIN.
The Mexican marines ordered the closing of the avenue in front of the condominium so as to block any possible escape routes. Then they went up into the building in order to penetrate the kingpin’s apartment, but not knowing which one. According to several witness accounts, the neighbors heard some people knocking at doors. Unexpectedly, they heard the noise of a loud impact coming from the door to one of the apartments on the 4th floor of the building. Without firing a shot, the security agents had caught Guzmán by surprise.
El Chapo was arrested at 6:40 a.m. He was not with a woman, as had been reported initially, but with a man identified as Carlos Manuel Hoo Ramírez, presumably one of his bodyguards, according to a report by the Mexican government quoted by AP.
According to U.S. officials who participated in the operation, the biggest surprise was not finding an arsenal of high-caliber weapons intended to protect the kingpin of kingpins. A Mexican official quoted by the daily Reforma assures that after his capture, El Chapo would not cease to be amazed, repeating to himself: “I can’t believe they found me.”
Read more: