(Thomson Reuters)
Recaptured drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman escorted by soldiers at the hangar belonging to the office of the Attorney General in Mexico City.
Sinaloa cartel kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman has asked his defense team to expedite his extradition to the US because he is being mistreated in a Mexican maximum-security prison, his lawyer said Wednesday, according to AFP.
Guzman, who was recaptured on January 8 after tunneling out of a jail cell in a spectacular escape, made the request in an "act of desperation," said lawyer Jose Refugio Rodriguez in a radio interview.
Rodriguez said it would take at least two months for the extradition process to be completed and that defense lawyers would have to discuss it with US authorities.
The timeline Rodriguez mentioned would likely require Guzman's lawyers to drop an estimated nine appeals they have filed.
"We won't drop the (legal) defense in Mexico until we have an agreement with the United States," Rodriguez cautioned
The lawyer said Guzman told him to negotiate with US authorities for a lighter sentence and confinement at a medium-security prison, according to the AP. Guzmán has mentioned those conditions before, saying that he was willing to plead guilty in the US if authorities there met his requests
Rodriguez said he saw Guzman on Tuesday and that the Sinaloa drug-cartel leader told him: "Try to get me extradited as fast as possible."
(REUTERS/Daniel Becerril)
A piñata in progress depicting the drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman is seen in front of a television showing a news bulletin of him, at a workshop in Reynosa, in Tamaulipas state, Mexico, January 13, 2016.
"He said to try to get a negotiation with the American government," Rodriguez said, according to the AP. "We know of agreements with other people for confinement in medium-security prisons ... a much lower sentence," Rodriguez added.
Guzman, 58, has complained that guards at the Altiplano prison, some 90 kilometers (55 miles) west of Mexico City, wake him up all the time.
(Univision Investiga)
José Refugio Rodríguez, a lawyer for Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán.
"Not allowing someone to sleep is an act of torture," Rodriguez said. "I saw a desperate man, a dejected man. I found him very discouraged and in a very serious state of health."
In February, Rodriguez gave The Associated Press a copy of Guzman's testimony in one of the cases against him. In it, the jailed drug lord accused prison authorities of torturing him "by waking him up, and said, 'I feel like a sleepwalker.'"
"My head and my ears always hurt and I feel bad all over," Guzman said in the document.