‘El Chapo’ sent tons of drugs to U.S., bribed Mexican police official: witness

NEW YORK — A former top lieutenant in a feared Mexican drug cartel on Monday fingered Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera as his former boss, and linked the accused drug lord to tons of illegal narcotics shipped into the U.S and millions of dollars in bribes for police protection.

“I worked for the Sinaloa cartel,” Miguel Ángel Martínez told federal jurors in a Brooklyn courtroom. Then he identified the man he said gave him orders for moving billions of dollars in narcotics. “I worked for Mr. Joaquín Guzmán.”

Martínez outlined the cartel’s inner workings, testifying that Guzmán negotiated an ownership and profits split with Colombian drug leaders who contracted with him to fly cocaine from secret South America airstrips to similar landing spots in Mexico.

The drugs were then smuggled across the Mexico-U.S. border to Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, Martínez said.

The defense has claimed that Martínez and other cooperating government witnesses are liars who would say anything in exchange for legal leniency.

Martínez said he grew so close to Guzmán from 1986 through the early 1990s that Guzmán ultimately entrusted him to deal with the Colombian partners, arrange the drug amounts, flights and fuel, and direct the landings.

He even named Guzmán the godfather to his son, he said.

Martínez told the jury that Guzmán, whose nickname means “shorty” in Spanish, was also known as “El Rapido” and “El Arquitecto” for the swiftness and reliability of the drug deliveries to dealers in the United States.

That reliability was bought and paid for, he testified.

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• El Chapo trial witness: Ex-Mexico security chief was bribed

Guzmán at least twice directed $10 million bribes during the late 1980s to a Mexican police commander named Guillermo González Calderon, Martínez alleged. In return, he said, the official helped Guzmán avoid capture.

Martínez said the cartel sought to avoid investigators by using secret codes. Talk of having a party tonight, he said, “meant get the planes ready.”

Vino – wine – meant jet fuel.

Martínez’s appearance mean a new level of restrictions to the already high-security trial.

Federal prosecutors, wary of giving Guzmán loyalists any clue about the former insider-turned-government informant, obtained a court order that barred courtroom sketch artists from depicting Martinez’s face or hairstyle.

Additionally, federal officers required Guzmán’s wife, Emma Coronel Aispuro, to go through a metal detector just before Martinez appeared because she was spotted in court last week with a cell phone, a violation of security rules.

Martínez, who appeared virtually bald during his testimony, cut what at first glance seemed an almost grandfatherly figure, with calm, matter-of-fact descriptions as he sat on the witness stand dressed in a dark suit and red patterned tie.

But answering prosecution questions from Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Robotti through a Spanish translator, he revealed the deadly menace underlying his chosen line of work.

Once, when he allowed a plane propeller to hit the ground and break on a short gravel landing strip in Mexico, Martínez said, a Guzmán bodyguard “wanted to kill me.”

Instead, Guzmán calmed the man, “said I was a really bad pilot,” and then transferred Martínez to other duties, Martínez testified.

The new assignment included opening and staffing a series of offices in Mexico City where an attorney working for Guzmán sought to broker deals with local police to overlook the drug cartel’s efforts, Martínez said.

Martínez is expected to continue his testimony on Tuesday with additional details of alleged Guzmán-directed drug shipments into the U.S.

He is the second former cartel insider to testify against Guzmán during the trial.

Last week, Jesus Zambada García, a former operations chief for Guzmán, identified his old boss and described the alleged drug cartel’s workings.

Defense attorneys are expected to cross-examine Martínez later this week.

Contributing: Associated Press

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