El Chapo Falls off Cliff, Breaks Leg, But Evades Special Forces

New information has surfaced that the world’s most powerful drug trafficker Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman fell off a cliff as he once again disappeared from the reach special forces that admit they were so close to him they saw he injured his face and fractured his leg, an unidentified source told CNN.

Mexican marines allegedly spotted El Chapo on Oct. 9 near the town of Cosala, in the mountainous region of the northwestern state of Sinaloa, according to the anonymous source close to the investigation into the drug kingpin’s escape.

The explanation continues saying that special forces were ready to move in on the drug lord, but after finding out he had a girl with him, authorities were reluctant to move in on him, the official added, according to CNN.

However, when Guzman was recaptured in February 2014, his wife, Emma Coronel, and his two infant daughters were with him, but it didn’t stop federal forces from moving in on him then.

Special military forces later spotted El Chapo again, but without the girl, so they pursued him on foot, according to the official. At that point, Guzman fell off the cliff and his bodyguards, the official added, rushed him into the woods.

Since then marines have raided various communities in the region and have been accused of rights abuses, raiding their homes, destroying vehicles and shooting at houses. Several hundred people have fled as a result.

On Wednesday, the Attorney General’s office announced eight more key accomplices who orchestrated and helped in Guzman’s spectacular jail break were arrested.

According to Attorney General Arely Gomez, the group that organized and supervised the construction of the mile-long tunnel from El Chapo's cell to a building in a lot in the middle of nowhere, and the pilots that flew him to Sinaloa immediately after his escape have all been detained.

La Jornada said they spoke to anonymous sources at the Attorney General's office and they told them that two of the detainees are a lawyer named Oscar Manuel Gomez and the owner of the lot through which El Chapo escaped, Francisco Ramirez.

Another of the detainees, according to La Jornada, is one of his wife's brother, Edgar Coronel. No explanation to why he is detained.

Lazaro Araujo was arrested for paying those who constructed the tunnel, while German Valadez, has been detained as the official tunnel builder for the Sinaloa cartel. He had a good run, considering over 130 tunnels have been discovered along the border with the United States and, according to officials in Mexico and the U.S., most of them belonged to Guzman.

The pilots were identified as Hector Ramón Takashima and Romano Lanciani Llanes. One of them supposedly flew El Chapo from Queretaro to Sinaloa, and the other one flew another similar Cessna aircraft that would serve as a decoy.

Gomez also said there were 34 arrest warrants against government officials and external collaborators suspected of assisting El Chapo. She added that 28 of those warrants have been served, while six are still at large.

But there it is suspected that high-level officials are also involved due to the ease of which Guzman escaped a maximum security prison.

Speculation is increasing over just how much authorities knew and how high complicity goes in this case, keeping in mind that in 2001 he allegedly paid off then President Vicente Fox. The DEA also claim that Guzman financed President Enrique Peña Nieto's election campaign.

Mexican journalist Jorge Gutierrez wrote in local paper El Polemon that one must ask why the federal government backtracked on a deal with Guzman and arrested him in the first place and why after he was arrested, was he allowed to escape?

“Is it because El Chapo has something on Enrique Peña Nieto, the federal government and the ruling party PRI that they prefer to be embarrassed by his escape?”, he asked.

Shouldn’t this construction in the middle of nowhere – yet close to the prison – have called the attention of authorities? Photo: AFP     

Washington says they told their colleagues in Mexico about El Chapo's plans to escape, so the immediate question would be why didn't the government of Peña Nieto order Guzman be moved to another cell? This is standard procedure. According to federal prison regulations, all inmates at maximum security jails must not remain in the same cell for more than a few months. El Chapo was in the same cell for about 17 months.

The question is also begged that if authorities knew he was attempting to escape and that he is a fanatic of tunnels, didn't they move him to another maximum security jail that did have functioning motion sensors in place?

These decisions have to come from the highest levels of government and in a high-profile case such as Guzman's, Peña Nieto himself would have to be involved in such important decisions.

Gomez said authorities have opened up new lines of investigations and that they are continuing efforts to detain Guzman, who she said, is hiding out in a zone called the Golden Triangle, which is where the borders of the states of Durango, Sinaloa and Chihuahua come together.

Again, for example, a contact told teleSUR in July that El Chapo was in Sinaloa up in the mountainous region of the Golden Triangle where he has absolute control, and this was later confirmed by the DEA, and yet, according to the Mexican government, it was not until late September that they began looking for Guzman in that region.

But this information surfaced only after hundreds of people fled communities in the Golden Triangle region, and accused Mexican marines of shooting indiscriminately at them, their homes, their property, vehicles and chasing them into the woods.

Witnesses told AFP last week that marines were firing from helicopters and throwing grenades at their homes and that ground troops were torching vehicles and firing on them at random.

“The marines say they were being shot at, but that is a complete lie,” an unidentified witness told a local newspaper and human rights defenders.

Of course, military officials denied the accusations and it was then they said they were after El Chapo who they added sustained facial and leg injuries as he escaped.

So the El Chapo saga continues to prove that reality surpasses fiction, or at least that is what the Mexican government wants everybody to believe making a legend out of a drug trafficker.

If El Chapo is recaptured, the Mexican government might consider avoid further embarrassment by immediately extradited him to the United States, who have insisted he be sent there to face criminal charges and to make sure he doesn't escape again, to which Mexico responded that they would send Guzman to the U.S. in about 300 years after he paid for all his crimes in their country.