Beauty queen decides to admit her husband’s case… the most powerful drug dealer in the world
Emma Coronel, wife of Mexican drug trafficker El Chapo, is preparing to plead guilty in US court.
Emma was arrested in February at Washington airport, accused of being involved in the activities of her husband’s gang.
The AFP source did not immediately say what charges the 31-year-old former beauty queen, who holds Mexican and American citizenship, intends to plead guilty to.
The New York Times, which first revealed the information, reported that Coronel had admitted that she helped her husband, Joaquín Guzmán, known as “El Chapo,” manage the Sinaloa cartel and that she helped him prepare for the 2015 escape from a Mexican prison.
El Chapo had escaped from a 1.5-kilometer tunnel dug under the shower of his cell, in an operation that dealt a heavy blow to the Mexican authorities.
Emma Coronel, who gave birth to two twin daughters of El Chapo, is expected to formally conclude the “guilty plea” agreement at a hearing before a judge in Washington DC on Thursday.
Such agreements are common in the U.S. judicial system and generally result in commutation of sentences for convicts. Emma Coronel is primarily facing up to 10 years in prison.
The agreement does not stipulate that Coronel would “cooperate” with U.S. prosecutors by providing them with information, as is the case in many such cases, according to The New York Times.
El Chapo, 64, is in jail after being sentenced in July 2019 to life in prison, following a high-security trial in New York. He is serving his sentence in a high-security prison in Colorado.
El Chapo was considered for years, until his extradition from the Mexican authorities to the United States in 2017, to be the world’s most powerful drug dealer.
