Video shows El Chapo escape

Mexican authorities have released surveillance video from Guzman’s maximum-security cell that shows his movements leading up to his escape.

Earlier, in 2001, he escaped from another Mexican maximum security prison in a laundry cart, after spending eight years in custody.

If anyone was capable of pulling off such a feat, it was Guzman, who is believed to have at least a quarter-century of experience in building large, sophisticated tunnels to smuggle drugs under the U.S.-Mexico border and to escape from hideouts as authorities closed in.

Two Federal Police officers stand next to a patrol vehicle with a picture of fugitive drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman’s on its window, in Acapulco, Guerrero State, Mexico, on Tuesday.

The footage shows El Chapo – which is Spanish for Shorty – looking behind the wall by his shower, before going back to sit on his bed.

Guzman’s escape from a top-security jail through a 1.5km-long tunnel is a major embarrassment for officials. He was housed in cell No. 20 in the Altiplano prison’s highest security wing below ground level.

He then walks to the shower and toilet area and just disappears.

The square of concrete in his shower appeared to have been punched out, rather than cut or chiseled.

Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman broke free from his cell using the tunnel Saturday evening and no official spotting has been confirmed since. Whoever helped in the plot likely had the architectural plans for the prison that pointed them toward the shower area, the official said.

Osorio Chong met with US Ambassador Anthony Wayne, agreeing “to strengthen the coordination and collaboration that exists between the two countries with the goal of recapturing Joaquin Guzman”, the interior ministry said. He was first captured in Guatemala in 1993, was extradited to Mexico and was serving a 20-year sentence when he escaped in 2001.

The interior ministry said 101 checkpoints have been placed on the main roads and highways of 21 of the country’s 31 states and the capital to find Guzman, who fled prison on Saturday, July 11.

Mexican security chiefs were aghast and the government said the breakout could only have taken place with the help of prison guards and officials, and fired the prison’s director.

They had blueprints, the engineers had blueprints to the facility, to the prison, they were able to come right up for him to get out and in the US, law enforcement authorities have declared him public enemy number one.

The Sinaloa cartel moves drugs by land, air and sea, including cargo aircraft, private aircraft, buses, fishing vessels and even submarines, the Justice Department has said.