El Chapo’s wife makes cryptic comment

El Chapo’s beauty queen wife said her husband “likes” his notoriety and she believes it could work to his advantage, in her first public interview in years.

The glamorous Emma Coronel Aispuro, 29, said media pressure was important “for the world to see how it really is”, as she attends the drug kingpin’s trial almost daily in New York City.

Ms Coronel, daughter of a senior member of the Sinaloa cartel, has been unable to hug or speak with husband Joaquin Guzman since he was extradited from Mexico in January 2017.

The 61-year-old cartel leader is facing 17 charges of trafficking $19 billion of cocaine into the US.

El Chapo (meaning “shorty” in Spanish) has pleaded not guilty to all the charges, claiming he was a scapegoat for the cartel, as well as Mexican and US officials who are desperate to convict the infamous drug lord.

But in her first interview in two years, Ms Coronel told Spanish-language TV network Noticias Telemundo her husband didn’t mind the attention. “You have to be honest, I think he did like it, he does like it a little,” she said with a smile.

“He says it’s like there should be media pressure so everything can be clearer. So they can see it and they can see what really happens.

“That’s what he really wants, for everyone to realise how things really are, and see it all from another perspective, so everything is clear.”

On Monday, former cartel member Tirso Martinez Sanchez told Brooklyn Federal Court that El Chapo ran a “cocaine train” from Mexico to New York. Sanchez said he was placed in charge of the railway operation after one predecessor shot himself in the face and another died on the operating table during plastic surgery.

Tankers would bring cooking oil into Mexico, the oil would be siphoned out and secret compartments on both ends would be stacked with cocaine, Sanchez said. He claimed the trains made around $500 million to $800 million for cartel from selling the drug in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles between 2000 and 2003.

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