2 top prison officials among 13 held over Mexico jail break

Mexico has arrested 13 former senior prison officials thought to be involved in the escape of the world’s most wanted drug trafficker, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, including the former director of El Altiplano, the maximum security prison the drug kingpin escaped from in July. Six days after his escape, seven jail staff have been charged in reference to it. The brand new arrests embody three high officers from the federal jail system, sources near the lawyer general’s offices stated.

The drug lord walked into the shower of his cell then disappeared out of sight of a surveillance camera watching him. It took guards 18 minutes to arrive at his cell and it was almost another 30 minutes before alerts were made that he had escaped.

One point of controversy has been whether the Mexican government should have agreed to a U.S. request to extradite Guzman on the basis that American prisons would have been harder for Guzman to break out of.

A statement from the federal prosecutor’s office on Friday said 11 men and two women were arrested and taken to prisons.

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.

Investigators say that Guzman must have had assistance from high-level prison sources to pull off his elaborate jailbreak.

Sinaloa drug cartel has supplied much of the marijuana, cocaine and heroin sold on US streets.

There is a $3.8 million reward for Guzman’s capture.

Guzman was imprisoned in February 2014, and his latest escape wasn’t the first. Forbes magazine once estimated “El Chapo’s” fortune at $1 billion.