Notorious drug cartel leader El Chapo has sent a desperate handwritten note to the judge who presided over his case from his isolation cell in a federal supermax prison.
The note, addressed to Judge Brian Cogan, complained that authorities have prevented him from communicating with his new attorney, José Israel Encinosa.
El Chapo, real name Joaquín Guzmán Loera, is being held at the maximum-security ADX Florence prison in Colorado.
He is held in isolation away from other prisoners and under Special Administrative Measures (SAMs) which require him to be locked up in solitary confinement 23 hours per day.
The former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel claimed in his letter, which was written in Spanish, that he has not been able to receive calls or correspondence from his legal representative for at least three weeks.
He argued in the letter that Encinosa has been trying to get permission to visit him in prison for the past 10 months, and that two letters sent by the lawyer were mysteriously never delivered.
El Chapo was sentenced to life in prison in 2019 for various drug trafficking offenses.
He wrote in the letter it is ‘vital’ to him to be able to freely contact his legal representative.
Notorious drug cartel leader El Chapo has sent a desperate handwritten note to the judge who presided over his case from his isolation cell in a federal supermax prison
El Chapo has previously written a handwritten note to complain about the prison conditions, lamenting the windowless cells and limited access to sunlight
El Chapo, real name Joaquín Guzmán Loera, is being held at the maximum-security ADX Florence prison in Colorado
Judge Cogan approved Encinosa joining El Chapo’s legal team in June, according to local media Entorno.
It is standard practice for high security prisons like ACX Florence to restrict access to new lawyers until they have been thoroughly vetted and given the right security clearances.
But El Chapo maintains the delay Encinosa has faced is unreasonable.
‘You ordered [access], but as of today, you haven’t been authorized,’ he wrote in the letter.
El Chapo’s lead attorney, Mariel Colón, has been the only person entitled to visit him in recent months, due to security concerns
Even his wife, Emma Coronel, and his twin daughters, have been forbidden from seeing him in person, sources told the publication.
Encinosa is reportedly seeking to appeal the conditions in which El Chapo is currently being held, while simultaneously preparing a motion demanding immediate access to his client.
Judge Cogan has given the prosecution a deadline of August 18 to respond.
The former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel claimed in his letter, which was written in Spanish, that he has not been able to receive calls or correspondence from his legal representative for at least three weeks
Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán is escorted by U.S. federal agents upon arriving in New York on January 19, 2017 following his extradition from Mexico
Back in 2023, El Chapo also resorted to a handwritten note to complain about the prison conditions, lamenting the windowless cells and limited access to sunlight.
It comes after El Chapo’s son Ovidio Guzmán López pleaded guilty to two counts of drug conspiracy and two counts of knowingly engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise last month.
New York and Illinois federal prosecutors alleged that Guzmán López and his three brothers assumed control of the Sinaloa Cartel once El Chapo was arrested in Mexico in 2016 and then extradited in 2019 to the United States.
The indictments indicated that the transnational drug trafficking organization made hundreds of millions by shipping, producing, and trafficking fentanyl to the United States.