After six months on the lam following his sensational escape from prison, the drug cartel boss Joaquin Guzman better known as “El Chapo” is back in police custody, Mexican president Enrique Pena Nieto announced on Twitter Friday. “Mission accomplished,” Pena Nieto declared in Spanish in his tweet.
Mexican authorities, working in tandem with American forces including the Drug Enforcement Administration and U.S. marshals, recaptured Guzman during a raid and subsequent shootout in Mexico early Friday morning, Reuters reported. The raid of the home, in which five other suspects were killed, according to the Associated Press, ended the international manhunt that began in July when Guzman tunneled out of his prison cell in a jailbreak reminiscent of a movie plot.
Guzman was once considered the effective CEO of the Sinaloa Cartel: a multi-billion-dollar business making as much in illicit sales as Netflix (NFLX) or Facebook (FB), according to the New York Times. He was dubbed the “CEO of Crime” in a recent Fusion documentary.
The drug lord’s most recent escape was actually his second: Guzman had also broken out of a Mexican prison nearly 15 years earlier, in 2001, according to the Reuters report. This time, though, El Chapo could find himself on unfamiliar soil: American authorities have requested to extradite Guzman to the U.S. to face charges of cocaine smuggling and money laundering, a request Mexico approved shortly after the prison break last summer, Reuters said.
