Federal judge denies request from a lonely "El Chapo" for phone calls, visits with daughters and wife

Source: CBS News

Federal judge denies request from a lonely "El Chapo" for phone calls, visits with daughters and wife

By Cara Tabachnick
April 16, 2024 / 3:03 PM EDT / CBS News

Mexican kingpin Joaquin Archivaldo "El Chapo" Guzman Loera had his request for phone calls and visits with his young daughters denied by a federal judge, who wrote in the motion that the Bureau of Prisons is now "solely responsible" for the lonely drug lord's conditions.

"This Court has no power to alter the conditions that the Bureau of Prisons has imposed," the judge wrote in the motion filed on April 10 in the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of New York. Calls and visits in effect while Guzman was on trial were superseded once he was convicted, the judge wrote. The court had previously authorized two telephone calls per month.

Guzman, once the world's most notorious cartel leader who was called by prosecutors a "ruthless and bloodthirsty leader," wrote in a March 20 letter asking the judge for visits with his wife and his two daughters. He said he hasn't had calls with his daughters for seven months and lawyers "have decided to punish me by not letting me talk to my daughters. To this day they have not told me if they will no longer give me calls with my girls," he wrote.

-snip-

Guzman is serving a life sentence in a Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado, which houses numerous high-profile inmates. He was convicted in 2019 of charges including drug trafficking, money laundering and weapons-related offenses. Since starting his sentence in the isolated prison, known as the "Alcatraz of the Rockies," "El Chapo" has petitioned for numerous ways to make his life on the inside more bearable.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/federal-judge-denies-el-chapo-family-calls-visits/