More arrests are made in prison escape of Mexico’s ‘El Chapo’

Reporting from Mexico City —  Thirteen more people have been arrested in connection with the July jailbreak of the world’s most wanted drug lord, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.

Few details were provided by authorities. But local media cited sources within the Mexican Attorney General’s office as saying the detained included Celina Oseguera Parra, the country’s former national prison chief, and Valentin Cardenas Lerma, former director of the Altiplano prison from which Guzman fled.

Both had been suspended from their jobs following Guzman’s escape.

The former prison director and 10 other men are being detained in the same Altiplano prison, in the state of Mexico on the outskirts of Mexico City, according to reports.

Oseguera Parra and another female suspect are being held at a women’s prison in Tepic, Nayarit.

There are now 20 people under arrest in connection with Guzman’s break on July 11 through a ventilated, well-lit tunnel from the floor of the shower in his cell to an abandoned house a mile away.

The escape was a huge embarrassment for Mexico President Enrique Peña Nieto and his administration — not only because of its movie-quality style, but because it was the second time that the head of the powerful Sinaloa cartel escaped from a maximum-security prison in Mexico. The first time he went on the lam was in 2001, from another high-security prison, Puente Grande.

Shortly after Guzman’s capture in February 2014, Peña Nieto said there was no way Guzman would escape again.

During an interview with Los Angeles-based Mexican reporter Leon Krauze, he said, “It would be more than regrettable, it would be unpardonable that the state and the government not take adequate measures to ensure that what happened years ago not be repeated,” the president said.

Following the July jailbreak, Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong said that Guzman must have had inside help to escape.

Bonello is a special correspondent.