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El Chapo Is Making the Case That His Extradition Was Illegal

The drug lord claims US authorities violated protocol and misled the Mexican government.

First he complained about the lack of bottled water in solitary confinement. Then he promised not to escape during "contact visits" with his attorneys. Now, Sinaloa Cartel kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzmán is arguing that he never should have ended up inside a maximum-security Manhattan jail to begin with.

The accused drug lord's public defenders filed a motion Thursday — viewable in full below — to dismiss his federal indictment on the grounds that U.S. authorities violated protocol and misled the Mexican government when Guzmán was shipped in January from a prison in Juarez to Brooklyn's Eastern District of New York.

Chapo is currently scheduled to stand trial there next April on drug, weapons, money laundering, and conspiracy charges that could put him behind bars for life. The latest maneuver by his attorneys is a long shot to get him off the hook. A recent ruling from a federal appeals court in a separate case does not bode well for the Sinaloan, and his judge in Brooklyn previously expressed skepticism when his lawyers raised questions about the legality of his extradition.

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