Four previously unreleased videos reveal the first moments after the arrest of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, the notorious drug trafficking kingpin. The footage shows him washing his face, being questioned by Mexican authorities and saying that his cartel would not launch an operation to break him out of prison.
The videos were published by the Mexican newspaper El Universal and show El Chapo shortly after he and his bodyguard, Orso Ivan “El Cholo Iván” Gastelum, were captured on January 8, 2016, after emerging from a sewer.
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The footage offers a rare glimpse of the cartel boss in the hours after his arrest and before his extradition to the United States.
In one of the videos, El Chapo asks for soap and then asks a police officer whether it could irritate his eyes.
“Won’t it bother my eyes?” he is heard saying.
The officer replies that it is best to avoid contact with the eyes and gives him permission to remove his mud-stained shirt.
The two detainees were taken to a hotel because officers feared that members of the Sinaloa cartel might try to locate them. They remained there until reinforcements arrived, before being transferred to a military hangar in Mexico City.
Another video shows El Chapo handcuffed and sitting in the back of a vehicle. When asked whether he had been mistreated, he replies: “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 cannabis cultivation and trafficking since childhood, but not in theft.
The third video contains the most surprising statement. The co-founder of the Sinaloa cartel told soldiers that his group of hitmen had been instructed not to organize a rescue operation if he was captured.
“I don’t like people who fight the government,” El Chapo says.
“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 fighting at all. I am sure there will be no fighting,” he says in the video.
This approach contrasts with the cartel’s actions on October 17, 2019, when members of the criminal organization set up roadblocks, burned vehicles and launched a military offensive to secure the release of El Chapo’s son.
Ovidio Guzmán López was briefly detained at his home in Culiacan, Sinaloa, under a U.S. extradition request. Then-Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador subsequently 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 being held at ADX Florence, a maximum-security prison in Florence, Colorado.
