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Last updated at 8:03 PM on 17th May 2011
He is the top dog in Mexico's bloody drug war, presiding over a $1billion drug empire and acused of firing the first shot in a bloody cartel war that has so far killed 38,000 people.
And now, aside from a personal fortune to rival Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, Joaquin Guzman Loera has a new reason to boast - he is the world's most wanted man.
One of the most chilling incidents was in 2009 , when an Archbishop in the state of Durango said that the fugitive was 'living nearby and everyone knows it except the authorities, who just don't happen to see him for some reason.'
Days later two undercover military officers were shot dead in their car, their bodies left with a note that read: 'You'll never get 'El Chapo', not the priests, not the government.'
Now El Chapo is said to have infiltrated the highest level of Mexico's government as President Felipe Calderon fights to keep control of his country amid claims that it is drug lords such as El Chapo who are really in charge.
Despite a $5 million (£3.3 million) bounty offered by the United States and another $2 million by Mexico, El Chapo — or Shorty — has given agents from both sides of the border the slip for nine years, since his escape in a laundry basket from the maximum-security Puente Grande jail.
Originally posted by anon102
Right ... huzzah is in order I suppose. Yes America is coming for you damn Mexicans ... oops, I mean El Chapo.
I think its great the U.S. is now going after this guy but ... what do you do about the Cartel culture which is already rampant and embedded in Mexico?
edit on 17-5-2011 by anon102 because: (no reason given)edit on 17-5-2011 by anon102 because: (no reason given)
Analysis: Clock Ticks on Calderon's Hunt for Drug Lord
MEXICO CITY | Tue May 17, 2011 3:24pm EDT
(Reuters) - With time running out to win a drugs war that has cost nearly 40,000 lives, only the scalp of Mexico's biggest kingpin can give President Felipe Calderon the symbolic victory his party desperately needs.
"It would be a real coup for Calderon, much like the Osama bin Laden takedown was for Obama," Grayson said.
Michael Braun of security consultancy Spectre Group International, former chief of global operations for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), says he is sure that Guzman's time is almost up.
"They will absolutely nail him in the not-too-distant future. I know personally that Mexican authorities have been so close on a number of occasions. I'm surprised they didn't have him 6-8 months ago," he said. "They were a hair away."