El Chapo's sons warn that COVID-19 lockdown violators will be tortured for two days: 'We’re not playing'
El Chapo's sons have forced a COVID-19 lockdown and threatened violators with torture in a city that is under their cartel's control.
The Mexican drug kingpin has handed control of the Sinaloa Cartel to sons Ivan Archivaldo Guzman and Jesus Alfredo since his arrest and imprisonment last year, The Daily Star reports.
The streets of Culiacan -- the capital of Sinaloa state -- are now rife with footsoldiers of the cartel, who have now warned residents not to step out of their homes during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“After 10 pm tonight, everyone must be inside their homes due to the coronavirus – otherwise they will be punished. These are orders from above," they are heard saying in video recording, before ending with a chilling warning that "this is no game, we’re not playing."
Lockdown protesters were warned in other footage that they would be tortured for two days at least and made to pay a hefty fine.
Some disturbing pictures have also surfaced, with one showing a man being beaten with a plank of wood that has “COVID-19” written across it.
This came after Sinaloa’s Secretariat of Public Security had already ordered the public to stay at home, although that is not compulsory.
“State police continue to invite the population to stay home and try to raise awareness among passers-by that we are not on vacation but in a Health Emergency due to Covid-19," the body previously tweeted.
Nonetheless, El Chapo's former cartel has also tried to win the public with several acts of charity during the crisis.
One of his daughters was recorded last month handing out aid packages to underprivileged residents in Guadalajara, Mexico's second-largest city.
Chapo's daughter Alejandrina was seen in one video posted to Facebook stuffing toilet paper and food supplies into a cardboard box that had a designer stencil-style image of her gangster father, who is currently behind bars.
The video narrator labeled the oil, sugar, rice, and other items in the boxes as "Chapo's provisions."
In February, following his arrest, El Chapo reportedly penned a letter to Mexico's President Andrés Manuel López Obrador expressing a desire to have his ill-gotten gains given away to the 15 million people who made up the 56 indigenous groups in the country.
"He expressed to his family over the phone his desire that the money that the United States intends to keep or that it has detected does not belong to the United States," his lawyer José Luis González Meza said at the time. "That the money should be returned to Mexico and his only plea to Mexican President López Obrador is for the money to be allocated to the indigenous communities."
In October last year, Ovidio Guzman -- another of Chapo's sons -- was released from custody after his arrest sparked a violent display of force from the cartel.
The cartel reminded authorities of their brutal grip in Culiacan after at least 13 people were killed during a series of gun battles.
Gunmen from the cartel took control of the entire city and erected roadblocks everywhere to obstruct law enforcement.
The violence was captured in shocking footage, showing streets engulfed in flames while gunmen fired armor-piercing .50 caliber rifles. They also had a fully armored truck mounted with a heavy machine gun.
El Chapo was convicted of a number of criminal charges related to his leadership of the Sinaloa Cartel and is currently being held in the US Penitentiary, Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, Colorado, where he will spend the rest of his life in solitary confinement.