Drug kingpin El Chapo sentenced to life in prison

Once one of the world’s most powerful and notorious criminals, Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman was jailed for life yesterday -- the mandatory sentence for a host of crimes spanning a quarter-century.

Guzman, the 62-year-old former co-leader of Mexico’s mighty Sinaloa drug cartel, was convicted in February in US federal court on a variety of charges, including trafficking hundreds of tons of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines and marijuana to US.

The much-anticipated sentencing hearing in a New York courtroom caps a dramatic legal saga and saw Guzman deliver what will likely be his final public words before he is taken to a supermax federal prison in Colorado for the rest of his days.

“Since the government of the United States is going to send me to a prison where they will never hear my name, I take this opportunity to tell them: there was no justice here,” he said, wearing a gray suit, lilac shirt, purple tie and publicly sporting his mustache for the first time stateside.

The charges, which also include money laundering and weapons-related offenses, carried a mandatory life sentence.

US Federal Judge Brian Cogan tacked a symbolic 30 years on the sentence and ordered Guzman to pay $12.6 billion in forfeiture -- an amount based on a conservative estimate of revenues from his cartel’s drug sales in US. So far, US have not recovered a dime.

Guzman -- whose moniker “El Chapo” translates to “Shorty” -- is considered to be the most influential drug lord since Colombia’s Pablo Escobar, who was killed in a police shootout in 1993.