El Chapo has hair, mustache shaved off by guards in rare prison video, tells them he is a 'farmer'
Pictures have come up to show notorious drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman with his hair and mustache shaved off in a jail.
The South American drug lord is shown on the jail floor next to a police dog -- a far cry from the luxury he enjoyed as the head of the Sinaloa cartel, smuggling massive amounts of cocaine, heroin, and other drugs to eventually become a billionaire.
According to a report by Mirror, the pictures are screenshots from a seven-minute-long 2016 video obtained by news site Latinus that was released this week. The footage shows Mexican law enforcement registering and interviewing Guzman at the Altiplano prison.
The following year, he was extradited to the United States and thrown under lock and key for life.
The captured gangster -- who is seen in the video wearing a beige uniform marked "3870" -- sports a cool and calm demeanor as he answers the Mexican prison guard's questions, barely looking up at the camera as he scrubs black fingerprint ink from his hands.
"El Chapo," he says when asked for his alias, before giving his occupation as "Farmer."
According to Reuters, the man in the images has the same haircut, features, and stocky build as Guzman on the day of his arrest. Furthermore, the drug lord's prison clothes and haircut match with later images of his behind bars.
Guzman had previously humiliated the Mexican government with two earlier escapes -- one via a mile-long tunnel from the same jail.
That said, the video appeared in line with the chronology of what happened that day, according to Juan Pablo Badillo, a lawyer for Guzman in Mexico since 2014.
The photos showed how guards at Altiplano searched him for contraband before shaving off his thick mustache and mop of black hair.
Guzman was then asked a routine questionnaire about his age, education, et cetera.
Interestingly, when asked for his wife's name, Guzman replied saying, "The one I'm married to is Alejandrina Salazar. But the one I live with is Emma Coronel."
The feared criminal then proceeded to sign a document, pulling his uniform to check the inmate number emblazoned across his chest.
However, the footage shows Guzman's hands dotted with freckles and liver spots.
The guards then escort him to a grim cell fitted with a grey cement bench. They furnish him with a thin mattress, a puffy jacket, and two rolls of toilet paper before locking the door on him.
According to reports, the 62-year-old drug kingpin has called on the Mexican government to leave his cash to the country's indigenous communities. He even penned a letter to Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador with the request. However, El Chapo's final wish -- which may be deemed altruistic -- is unlikely to be granted considering the US is trying its best to flush out his staggering $12B fortune.
Duncan Wood, director of the Wilson Centre's Mexico Institute, said: “If El Chapo did reveal the whereabouts of his wealth, I don’t think it would be him who chose to who it was given." He added, "I think there would be efforts on the part of the US government to seize those assets and use them to rectify damages in the US."
"There would be efforts on the part of the Mexican government as well," he went on to say.