NEW YORK — Lawyers for Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman complained during a Friday court hearing that the conditions being imposed on their client at a New York City jail are too strict.
Guzman, who has repeatedly been imprisoned and escaped in Mexico, appeared Friday in a federal court in Brooklyn.
His lawyers said he’s being locked up 23 hours a day, is barred from seeing his wife and can’t call anyone except his lawyers.
Guzman smiled at his common-law wife, Emma Coronel, as he was led into the Brooklyn courtroom under heavy guard by deputy U.S. marshals at his second court appearance since being brought to the United States on Jan. 19.
“This was so far the only way she has been able to see him,” defense attorney Michelle Gelernt said afterward with a silent Coronel at her side.
Guzman, 59, has pleaded innocent to charges of running a massive drug-trafficking operation that laundered billions of dollars and oversaw murders and kidnappings. He’s being held at a high-security federal jail in Manhattan, with U.S. officials mindful of how he twice escaped from prison in Mexico, the second time via a mile-long tunnel dug to the shower in his cell.
On Friday, defense lawyers complained to U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan that the restrictions make it difficult for him to make decisions with them about how to fight the charges. They claimed his jailers are so zealous that they denied him water during a recent meeting with the defense team.