El Chapo is a dead man: Popeye Chief Sicario of Pablo Escobar

Translated by Otis B Fly-Wheel for Borderland Beat from a Proceso article

[ Subject Matter: El Chapo
Recommendation: No prior subject matter knowledge required]

Jhon Jairo Velasquez, nicknamed "Popeye"

Reporter: Rafael Croda
Don't take this as a threat, said the cold calculated ex head of Sicario's for Pablo Escobar, Jhon Jairo Velasquez, nicknamed "Popeye", one of the three surviving members of the Medellin Cartel, is sure that the Mexican Capo will be captured if all his enemies, Police, Military, American Agents and including Los Zetas, unite to locate him.

The problem, he says, is that the Mexican Government doesn't consider it convenient that he lives.




One year after leaving prison, and in spite that there is " an 80% chance of being killed", the ex Chief of Sicario's lives in Medellin without hiding.

At a law office in an exclusive area of Medellin (Otis: probably El Poblado Barrio), Popeye arrived with two bodyguards, he spoke about the process of his freedom after 23 years in prison and step by step, talks about following the news of the criminal underworld, including the escape of the Mexican drug trafficker Joaquin Guzman Loera.

The ex-gunman who spent ten years at the side of Escobar and has lived with the criminal elite of Colombia:

El Chapo is a dead man

Why?

He knows that he has to be killed, because if they capture him he will be extradited to the United States. He would not be able to take life in a United States Supermax prison. There he would receive three meals a day, no body will speak to him, there is no human contact and any letter he receives is only shown to him on a television screen.

You believe El Chapo would not be able to take this kind of regime?

No, when he is allowed out of his cell it will be to take some open air in a cage, and for a recalcitrant Mexican like El Chapo, as was true for Pablo Escobar when he lived here in Colombia,  to be in prison in the United States is an unbearable thing, and this is why El Chapo will be killed.

According to this vision of Velasquez Vasquez, a retired bandit, the Sinaloan Capo knows that if he is captured his will be extradited to the United States because for the Government of Enrique Pena Nieto " it would be impossible to keep El Chapo in a Mexican prison after his last escape".

Popeye also escaped from prison on 22nd of July 1992. He did this with Pablo Escobar, the head of the Medellin Cartel, when the Government of Cesar Gaviria wanted to transfer them from the "La Catedral" prison which Escobar controlled, to a Military prison.

Escobar, the principal narco trafficker of his epoch, was at large for 16 months and 11 days, on December the 2nd, 1993, he was shot dead on a roof top in Medellin, while being pursued by members of the search block, a group of Police-Military elite who chased him day and night.

According to Popeye, it will take the Mexican Authorities between 16 and 18 months to locate him.

Where did you come up with these time scales?

It is the logical time scale according to their finances, Chapos family and his security apparatus. That is not from one day to another are small steps, they have to carry out a lot of intelligence work, and that can be slow, but may be sped up because El Chapo is a political issue for the Mexican Government of Honor.

Original article in Spanish at Proceso