I told the cartel not to try to free me if I was arrested”/ Rare footage of El Chapo’s arrest and his statements to police released

Four previously unpublished videos reveal the first moments after the arrest of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, the infamous drug-trafficking kingpin. The footage shows him washing his face, being questioned by Mexican authorities and assuring them that his cartel would not launch an operation to get him out of prison.

The material was published by the Mexican newspaper El Universal and shows El Chapo together with his bodyguard, Orso Ivan “El Cholo Iván” Gastelum, shortly after the two were captured on January 8, 2016, after emerging from a sewer.

The footage offers a rare insight into the cartel boss’s condition immediately after his arrest and before his extradition to the United States.

In one of the videos, El Chapo asks for soap and then asks one of the police officers: “Won’t it hurt my eyes?”

The officer replies that it would be better to avoid contact with his eyes, while also telling him that he could remove his mud-covered shirt.

Fearing that members of the Sinaloa cartel might be tracking them, officers took the two detainees to a hotel. They remained there until reinforcements arrived, before being transferred to a military hangar in Mexico City.

Another video shows El Chapo handcuffed and distressed, sitting in the back of a vehicle. When asked whether he had been mistreated, he replied: “No.”

After arriving in Mexico City, he was questioned by the military. According to the footage, El Chapo admitted that he had been involved in cultivating cannabis and drug trafficking since childhood, but not in theft.

The third video contains the most surprising statement. The co-founder of the Sinaloa cartel told military personnel that his team of assassins had been ordered not to organize any rescue operation if he was captured.

“I don’t like people who fight the government,” El Chapo declared.

“I told them that this has an end. If one day I fail, I don’t want them to fight with any police officer, at all. No, there will be no war, at all. I am sure there will be no war,” he is heard saying in the video.

This stance was at odds with the actions of his criminal organization on October 17, 2019. That day, cartel members set up roadblocks, burned vehicles and launched a military offensive to secure the release of his son.

Ovidio Guzmán López was briefly detained at his home in Culiacan, Sinaloa, as part of an extradition request made by the United States. However, then-Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador ordered his release.

The fourth video shows El Chapo and Gastelum sitting on a plane with their heads covered.

El Chapo was extradited to the United States on January 19, 2017. On February 12, 2019, a federal court in Brooklyn sentenced him to life in prison.

He is currently serving his sentence at ADX Florence, the maximum-security prison in Florence, Colorado.