El Chapo Trial: "He was still attempting to breathe and that's how we dumped him in the hole and buried him"

Chivis Martinez Borderland Beat-from El Pais

From Eduardo Balarezo today 1.25.19: "To avoid any confusion or rumors, we will not disclose the names of any witnesses unless they are called to testify. Similarly, we will not disclose Joaquin’s plans about testifying until the time comes to inform the Court."

What else could be heard in the trial against Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán that the jury did not know? The answer to the question of Judge Brian Cogan was answered in a macabre manner by the last cooperative witness presented by the  Prosecutor's Office, which ends against El Chapo Guzman.

According to Isaías Valdez, aka Memín, [at left] his boss tortured and murdered a member of the Arellano Félix and two of the rival group of the Zetas.

AFO member

The aid worker described with two violent acts in which El Chapo was the executor. The first one took place between 2006 and 2007, in the town of Bastantitas, in Durango. Ismael El Mayo Zambada, according to his story, sent a member of Arellano Felix on his plane. "He was already quite tortured," he explained, "with his body burned with cigarette lighter marks." "He also  had been burned with an iron, an iron used to iron clothes. He had been burned all over his body. Even the bottom of his feet was burned."

The shirt, he said when he narrated his condition, had it attached to the flesh. El Chapo was upset, according to Memin, when he was informed. " 'How can they send me this bastard  like that? They might as well have killed him." Chapo asked. They waited three days until he came to see him and interrogate him to get information from other members of the cartel who were in the plaza. They decided at that moment to take the victim to another place and put him in a chicken coop.

"He was thrown in there for several days," he said, "stinking of rottenness." Guzman ordered him out and asked his people to dig a hole. The capo took out a small pistol, put it behind his head when he was on the edge of what was to be his grave and interrogated him again,  said Memin. And while he responded, "he shot him", after calling him a son of a bitch. "Remove his handcuffs and bury him," Memin recalled him saying.

The gun was very small, caliber 25, so he did not die instantly.

He was still gasping for air, attempting to breathe. "And that's how we dumped him in the hole and buried him," he said.

Gift from Damaso’s people---two Zetas

It was also between 2006 and 2007, this in the town of Coluta, also in Durango. "They sent us a gift," announced El Chapo. This time it was from the people of Dámaso López, who had seized two Zetas.

Guzman ordered to receive them and to put them in a barn  where they kept grass for the cattle and ordered them to begin the "heat" using  blows to release information. The capo then asked them to look for a branch  and a secluded  place in the mountain where he could torture them.

He began beating them. "They could not move," he said, "they had broken bones." El Chapo also used his rifle to beat them while asking them how they could work for the Zetas and betray him from the same area that was controlled by the Sinaloa Cartel.

After three hours, he asked to open a large hole in the ground, to take logs and to light a fire.

Late at night, they took the two men and brought them to the fire. Memin explained that they were placed on the grid of two four-wheeled bikes.

One was taken by El Chapo. The two rivals were still alive, they were lowered, the boss took out his rifle, put a bullet in it, placed the gun on the head of one of them and shot him after calling his mother a whore. "He did the same with the second," he said.

Once executed, they put their bodies to the stake. "Make sure that there is not even a bone left," he said before leaving.

The bonfire remained alive until dawn.

Isaías Valdez also related how he executed several orders from Joaquín Guzmán to kill two "rats" who were informing the authorities.

He also recounted a confrontation they had with members of the Beltrán Leyva cartel at a gas station on the outskirts of Culiacán, in which eight people from the rival gang were killed.

Memin sys he was under the orders of El Chapo for a decade. He joined the Sinaloa cartel after leaving the special forces of the Mexican Army. He started working in the security circle that protected the drug trafficker in the sierras of Sinaloa. He also did it later for the sons of Joaquín Guzmán and became one of his pilots.

Judge Cogan told the jury that evidence will finish at the end of next week..... then closing arguments and verdict watch