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'Comandante, There's a Hole in the Shower': New Audio of Chapo Guzman's Jailbreak

CCTV footage of drug lord's cell reveals banging clearly audible four minutes before he escapes through hole in the shower area, and guards take a further 18 minutes to arrive.
Foto di archivio AP

Loud hammering was audible in Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman's prison cell as accomplices tunneled beneath shortly before his spectacular escape in July, according to CCTV footage broadcast on Wednesday.

The new footage, broadcast by the Televisa TV network, suggests guards monitoring surveillance cameras failed to react to the noise. It also appears to show that nobody even went to Chapo's empty cell until 26 minutes after he disappeared from view in the shower area, the only blind spot in his cell, and then down into a mile-long tunnel that would take him to freedom.

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The government, which was severely embarrassed by the July 11 jailbreak, had previously shown parts of the same footage, beginning two minutes before Guzmán was gone.

The new footage is longer and has audio, though a spokesman for federal prosecutors could not immediately confirm that the new audio is genuine.

The video begins with Guzmán lying on the bed in his cell next to an audiovisual device with the volume turned up. The noise of what sounds like a TV show only partially drowns out the sound of repeated banging, presumably made by accomplices breaking the shower floor from beneath. The hammering begins about four minutes before the kingpin disappears down the hole with the timer on the video showing 20:52.

Televisa also showed concurrent footage of what it said was the control center meant to be monitoring the prisoners in the Altiplano penitentiary not far from Mexico City.

Several people are shown watching their screens but apparently failing to notice or ignoring what was happening in Guzman's cell. It is not possible to see what was showing on the screens of the staff in the control room.

The government has so far arrested 34 people in the wake of the jailbreak, including the then prison warden and a pilot suspected of flying Guzmán into hiding once he he had left the jail.

(AP file photo)

The interior ministry has already accepted that the escape would only have been possible with the collusion of guards and other prison officials, but questions remain about the extent of the help the kingpin received.

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The footage broadcast by Televisa suggests that nobody responded to Chapo disappearing from view until guards arrive at his locked cell 26 minutes later.

"Comandante, there's a hole in the shower," a guard is heard saying, presumably to his commanding officer.

"What size," comes the reply.

"Big, comandante, it's big."

It takes a further 11 minutes before more guards return to the cell with torches and take a closer look at the hole. None of the guards who feature in the video appear to be in any particular hurry.

"The video presented today shows the government's deep disdain," said Senator Alejandro Encinas, who is a member of the bicameral security commission. "The authorities lied and covered up information."

Guzmán, boss of the powerful Sinaloa Cartel, was locked up in the jail after his capture by security forces in northwestern Mexico in February 2014. The jailbreak was his second.  He escaped from another maximum-security facility in 2001.

Related: Mexico Sends US-Born Drug Lord 'La Barbie' Back Home to Face Charges 

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