Lawyers for El Chapo, a Mexican drug czar jailed in Brooklyn, claimed in court Thursday that he was extradited to Brooklyn improperly and asked for his case to be thrown out.
Lawyers for the drug kingpin, whose real name is Joaquin Guzman, said that the Mexican government had only agreed to send him to Texas or California, and said that the indictment violated the extradition treaty of the U.S. and Mexico, according to the New York Daily News.
Guzman’s trial is set to begin in April, the Daily News reported. He is accused of killing thousands of people while at the head of the Sinaloa drug cartel and shipping over 200 tons of cocaine into the U.S. through numerous means including trucks, planes, and ships of various kinds, The New York Times reported.
The drug lord was brought to the U.S. in January on a police jet to face trial. Mexico consented for him to be brought to New York after he was already on the jet by issuing a waiver for the Rule of Specialty, which would have allowed him to be tried only on the specific charges he was extradited over, the Times reported.
Guzman’s lawyers also argued against the seizure of $14 billion in alleged drug profits, claiming they were not included in the original extradition paperwork, the Times reported. The U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn had no comment on the filing.
If the indictment is dismissed, Guzman would likely still be prosecuted in one of the other cities where he was also indicted, the Times reported. Guzman’s lawyers have filed numerous times with the courts over minute details of his case and over the conditions of his incarceration at Manhattan’s federal jail, where he is in solitary confinement.
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