(IntegrityTimes.com) – Former Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman recently sent a complaint in the Eastern District of New York, telling District Court Judge Brian M. Cogan that he was not allowed to have phone calls or visits in prison. His letter said that the maximum security prison stopped allowing him to have phone calls with his daughters for the last seven months. He wrote that prison staffers told him that “the FBI agent who monitors the calls does not answer,” adding that no other details were provided to him. He asked the judge to give authorization for his wife to bring his daughters to visit him, as they could only come during their breaks from school in Mexico.
He claimed that his denial of outside communication was “unprecedented discrimination,” writing that it was a form of punishment. Judge Cogan denied Guzman’s request because the U.S. Bureau of Prisons was in charge of his arrangements post-conviction. In 2019, Guzman was sentenced to life in prison for operating an industrial-scale drug smuggling operation. He led the Sinaloa cartel, which is still in operation today. During the 25 years he was in charge, the cartel conducted a large number of drug smuggling operations and killed many people in the United States. The cartel mostly smuggled cocaine, but other drugs were also included in its operations.
Guzman escaped from prison multiple times in Mexico before he was sentenced to life in prison in the United States. He will live out his days in the Administrative Maximum U.S. Penitentiary in Florence, Colorado. After his first escape from prison, he managed to evade authorities for 10 years before being recaptured. He escaped again in 2015 through a tunnel dug in the shower of his prison cell. Last August, Guzman wrote a letter to Cogan with the same request. His wife was also once imprisoned for her role in the smuggling enterprise.
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