The wife of drug kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán claims her husband is a loving family man unfairly scapegoated by Mexican authorities, and his life is at risk because of harsh prison conditions imposed since his recapture in January.
In her first ever interview, Guzman’s third wife Emma Coronel, 26, said her husband was being “slowly tortured” in prison and was suffering from dangerously high blood pressure which made her “afraid for his life”.
This is the first time the former beauty queen has spoken publicly about her eight years of marriage to the leader of the Sinaloa cartel – one of the world’s most powerful criminal organisations and responsible for much of the violent drug trade between Mexico and the US.
Coronel was interviewed on Telemundo by Anabel Hernández, the acclaimed Mexican investigative reporter who has received death threats over her work exposing links between cartel bosses such as Guzmán and state officials, in a seafood restaurant in Culiacán, the capital of Sinaloa state.
Guzman, 58, was recaptured in January following six months on the run after he embarrassed Mexican authorities in July 2015 by escaping from a maximum security prison on a motorbike through a sophisticated tunnel which opened into his shower room.
theguardian