- Within hours of his sentencing on Wednesday, convicted cartel leader Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman was on his way to prison.
- US authorities would only say that he was headed to the supermax facility in Florence, Colorado, nicknamed "Alcatraz of the Rockies."
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NEW YORK (AP) — A lawyer says authorities have wasted no time in sending the convicted Mexican drug lord known as El Chapo to an ultra-high-security prison where he will serve a life sentence.
Defense Attorney Jeffrey Lichtman said Thursday that Joaquin Guzman was whisked away by helicopter only a few hours after his sentencing in New York City on Wednesday.
He says authorities would tell him only that his client was en route to the supermax facility in Florence, Colorado. Prison officials and prosecutors wouldn't talk about Guzman's whereabouts on Thursday.
The 62-year-old Guzman — who twice escaped from high-security prisons in Mexico — has been the subject of extreme security measures ever since his extradition to the US in 2017 to face drug-trafficking charges.
Authorities were determined to prevent any repeat of the notorious narco's jailbreaks in Mexico. The supermax facility in Colorado — called US Penitentiary, Administrative Maximum Facility, or ADX Florence — has not had an escape since it opened in 1994 to house the most dangerous inmates in the US prison system.
ADX Florence's stifling security measures have earned it the nickname "Alcatraz of the Rockies."
Among its inmates are 1993 World Trade Center bombing mastermind Ramzi Yousef, former Gulf cartel chief Osiel Cardenas Guillen, Theodore Kaczynski, who is known as the "Unabomber," and convicted Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
The extreme isolation that inmates face ADX Florence has brought criticism from rights groups.
"As soon as they come through the door ... you see it in their faces," Robert Hood, ADX Florence warden from 2002 to 2005, said in 2015. "The Supermax is life after death. It's long term. ... In my opinion, it's far much worse than death."
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