A MEXICAN JUDGE has sentenced the father-in-law of drug lord Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman to more than a decade in prison, Mexican officials said yesterday.
Ines Coronel Barreras, aged 49, was accused of smuggling marijuana to the United States and was arrested in the town of Agua Prieta, which borders the US state of Arizona.
The judge condemned Coronel – the father of Guzman’s third wife, former beauty queen Emma Coronel – to 10 years, five months and nine days in prison, in addition to a fine equivalent to 15,930 pesos (€777).
The US Treasury Department had designated Coronel as a “key operative” of the Sinaloa drug cartel prior to his 2013 arrest.
He was detained alongside four other men, with police also seizing two vehicles, four rifles, one gun and 255 kilograms of marijuana.
Guzman – the powerful Sinaloa cartel’s notorious leader accused of running one of the world’s biggest drug empires – is currently detained in Manhattan where he is awaiting trial.
The man who for years was the world’s most wanted drug trafficker has pleaded not guilty to a raft of firearms, drug trafficking and conspiracy charges.
He escaped from a Mexican prison in 2001, was re-arrested in 2014, then escaped a maximum security prison through a tunnel the following year.
He was recaptured in January 2016 and extradited to the United States a year later.
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