Lawyer: ‘El Chapo’ will plead guilty if extradited to the US

Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán would plead guilty if extradited to the United States, a lawyer for the drug lord says.

The lawyer, José Refugio Rodríguez, said he had consulted with a U.S.-based attorney, William Stuttgart, and relayed the advice to his client, according to Radio Fórmula. 

{mosads}Guzmán, per Rodriguez, had agreed to plead guilty in a prospective deal for a “reasonable sentence” in a “medium-security detention center. A prison where he wouldn’t be in the same conditions as he is in Mexico.”

In July, Guzmán used a tunnel to escape from the federal maximum security El Altiplano prison. The escape embarrassed the Mexican government on the international stage and led to a nationwide manhunt for Guzmán.

Guzmán was re-captured in January and sent back to the same prison.

The United States has long pressured the Mexican government to extradite Guzmán, a request that had often been refused. In January 2015, then Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam said Mexico would extradite Guzmán after he finished his sentence, “in 300 or 400 years.” 

Interior Secretary Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong said last week that extradition would “follow strict legal procedure.”