Emma Coronel (pictured above), the wife of the imprisoned Mexican drug lord Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, has been set free from detention in the United States.
She had previously admitted to drug trafficking charges and was initially sentenced to three years in prison in November 2021. However, her sentence was later reduced, leading to her release.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons has confirmed her release. It is believed that the 34-year-old left a halfway house in California, where she had been transferred from federal prison in June.
Her husband, El Chapo Guzmán, is currently serving a life sentence in a supermax prison in Colorado. He was convicted in 2019 for his leadership of the Sinaloa cartel, a notorious Mexico-based criminal organization responsible for smuggling vast quantities of drugs, including cocaine, marijuana, methamphetamines, and heroin, into the United States.
El Chapo Being Arrested
The cartel's ruthless tactics included kidnapping, torture, and murder to solidify its control. It also had a history of corrupting law enforcement and high-ranking politicians in Mexico and Central America to facilitate its drug operations.
Emma Coronel first crossed paths with Guzmán when she was just 17, while participating in a local beauty pageant. Her father, Inés Coronel, was a high-ranking member of the Sinaloa cartel, currently serving a 10-year sentence in Mexico for drug trafficking.
Guzmán managed the cartel from various hideouts in northern Mexico, even after his dramatic escape from prison in a laundry cart in 2001. His relationship with Emma Coronel was formalized in a ceremony when she was 18, although it remains unclear whether their marriage was officially registered with Mexican authorities.
Emma Coronel, a dual US-Mexican citizen, gave birth to the couple's twin daughters in California in 2011, granting them US citizenship.
After Guzmán's 2014 arrest, he escaped again in 2015 through a sophisticated tunnel leading from his prison cell to a nearby warehouse, complete with ventilation shafts and a motorcycle on rails.
During her trial, prosecutors asserted that Coronel had played a pivotal role in her husband's escape and had acted as a conduit for his instructions to cartel members and his sons from previous marriages, known as the Chapitos (Little Chapos).
Coronel was arrested at Dulles airport near Washington DC in February 2021, accused of being fully aware of her husband's criminal activities and the extensive drug trafficking of the Sinaloa cartel.
She pleaded guilty to drug trafficking and money laundering.
At her sentencing, Coronel requested leniency, citing her children's well-being. She received a three-year prison sentence, later reduced, leading to her recent release.
While her future plans remain uncertain, her husband's plea for her to visit him in Colorado suggests that such a journey may be on the horizon.
In his letter, Guzmán expressed the limited visitation opportunities for their 12-year-old daughters, who are studying in Mexico and can only travel to see their father a few times a year during holidays.
In another news, a 19-year-old man stands accused of holding his girlfriend against her will in her university dorm room in Minnesota, subjecting her to a horrifying ordeal involving rape, physical assault, and waterboarding before her eventual escape. See detailed story here
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