Drug lord 'El Chapo' Guzman escapes from Mexican prison

MEXICO CITY — In a scheme befitting a crime novel, Mexico's most powerful drug lord, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, escaped from a maximum security prison...

The elaborate, ventilated escape hatch built allegedly without the detection of authorities allowed Guzman to do what Mexican officials promised would never happen after his recapture last year — slip out of one of the country's most secure penitentiaries for the second time.

Eighteen employees from various part of the Altiplano prison 55 miles west of Mexico City have been taken in for questioning, Security Commissioner Monte Alejandro Rubido said in a news conference without answering questions.

A manhunt began immediately...

Associated Press journalists near Altiplano saw the roads were being heavily patrolled by Federal Police with numerous checkpoints and a Blackhawk helicopter flying overhead. Flights were also suspended at Toluca airport near the penitentiary in the State of Mexico, and civil aviation hangars were being searched.

Guzman was last seen about 9 p.m. Saturday in the shower area of his cell...   Upon checking his cell, authorities found it empty and a 20-by-20-inch hole near the shower.

Guzman's escape is an embarrassment to the administration of President Enrique Pena Nieto...

Guzman faces multiple federal drug trafficking indictments in the U.S. as well as Mexico and was on the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's most-wanted list.

After Guzman was arrested on Feb. 22, 2014, the U.S. said it would file an extradition request, though it's unclear if that happened.

The Mexican government at the time vehemently denied the need to extradite Guzman, even as many expressed fears he would escape as he did in 2001 while serving a 20-year sentence in the country's other top-security prison, Puente Grande, in the western state of Jalisco.

Former Mexican Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam told the AP earlier this year that the U.S. would get Guzman in "about 300 or 400 years" after he served time for all his crimes in Mexico. Murillo Karam said sending Guzman to the U.S. would save Mexico a lot of money, but keeping him was a question of national sovereignty.

He dismissed concerns that Guzman could escape a second time. That risk "does not exist," Murillo Karam said.

It was difficult to believe that such an elaborate structure could have been built without the detection of authorities. According to Rubido, the tunnel terminated in a house under construction in a neighborhood near the prison....

Guzman is known for the elaborate tunnels his cartel has built underneath the Mexico-U.S. border...

He was first caught by authorities in Guatemala in 1993, extradited and sentenced to 20 years in prison on drug-trafficking charges. Many accounts say he escaped in a laundry cart...

Guzman was finally recaptured in February 2014...

During his first stint as a fugitive, Guzman transformed himself from a middling Mexican capo into arguably the most powerful drug trafficker in the world. His fortune grew to be estimated at more than $1 billion...

Guzman has long been known for his ability to pay off local residents and authorities, who would tip him off to operations launched for his capture. He finally was tracked down to a modest beachside high-rise in the Pacific Coast resort city of Mazatlan, where he had been hiding with his wife and twin daughters. He was taken in the early morning without a shot fired.

But before they reached him, security forces went on a several-day chase through Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa state. They found houses where Guzman supposedly had been staying with steel-enforced doors and the same kind of lighted, ventilated tunnels that allowed him to escape from a bathroom to an outside drainage ditch.

Even with his 2014 capture, Guzman's Sinaloa Cartel empire continues to stretch throughout North America and reaches as far away as Europe and Australia....

Altiplano, which is considered the main and most secure of Mexico's federal prisons, also houses Zetas drug cartel leader Miguel Angel Trevino, and Edgar Valdes Villarreal, known as "La Barbie," of the Beltran Leyva cartel.

An interconnected tunnel in the city's drainage system that infamous drug boss Joaquin Guzman Loera, "El Chapo" used to evade authorities, is shown, in Culiacan, Mexico, Sunday Feb. 23, 2014. A day after troops narrowly missed infamous Guzman in Culiacan, one of his top aides was arrested. Officials said he told investigators that he picked up Guzman from a drainage pipe and helped him flee to Mazatlan but a wiretap being monitored by ICE agents in southern Arizona provided the final clue that led to the arrest of one of the world's most wanted men.