MEXICO: El Chapo Escape Was Meticulously Planned

‘El Chapo’ Escape Was Meticulously Planned. A security video intended to answer questions about drug lord’s escape instead sparked criticism of the government’s inability to keep him in jail.

A security video intended to answer questions about drug lord’s escape instead sparked criticism of the government’s inability to keep him in jail
CCTV footage taken from Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán’s prison cell shows the moment he escaped from Altiplano prison into an underground tunnel.

Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, Mexico’s top drug lord, paced back and forth in his jail cell. He stopped several times to inspect his shower stall’s floor. He returned to his bed, changed his shoes, strolled to the stall fully dressed and stooped below a waist-high wall.

And he was gone.

The government released a security video of these last acts of Mexico’s most-wanted criminal before his Saturday night jailbreak to answer questions over the escape—his second from a maximum-security prison in 14 years. Instead, it sparked fresh criticism of the government’s inability to keep the Sinaloa cartel leader behind bars.

The fallout from Mr. Guzmán’s escape continued on Wednesday, as thousands of police and soldiers searched for a man who spent 13 years on the run after his previous escape. Officials questioned 21 prison guards and the longtime intelligence chief of the federal police was fired Wednesday for failing to detect the escape plan. Angry calls grew in Congress for a full investigation into the escape. Interpol issued an international arrest warrant.

For days, top Mexican officials have justified their loss by saying the video cameras watching Mr. Guzmán had a blind spot in his shower area, obscuring the moment when he vanished. Interior Minister Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong even suggested that human-rights groups were to blame for their insistence on protecting inmate privacy.

Mr. Osorio backtracked on his allegation after Amnesty International issued a statement blasting him, saying it was “endemic corruption” and not human rights that was to blame.

The video also casts doubt on Mr. Osorio’s version of events. It shows no significant blind spot. Mr. Guzmán’s shower stall had only a short wall meant to shield his lower body from view as he showered. The video plainly captures the moment when he ducks down below the wall and disappears.

“There were no blind spots in the video, there were only blind people watching them,” said Alejandro Hope, a Mexico City security analyst. “The video is a devastating blow to the government version of events.”

Mexico’s leading newspaper Reforma, citing unnamed senior government officials, reported on Wednesday that it took authorities nearly 30 minutes to raise the alarm after Mr. Guzmán disappeared from view. If true, that raised difficult questions: Why did it take so long? Who, exactly, was watching the cameras?

Mexican officials haven't specified how long it took, and didn’t answer questions about the sequence of events on Wednesday.

Mr. Hope, a former high-ranking intelligence official in the administration of former President Felipe Calderón, said that most top prisoners used to be watched in live video feeds both at the prison and at the command center of the federal police. But Mr. Hope said he didn’t know if that was still the case and officials wouldn’t say.

In presenting the 90-second video, Mexico’s national-security commissioner said it showed an inmate acting completely normally—“natural for a prisoner who spends long hours in his cell.”

But the video seemed to show an inmate acting anything but normal. Mr. Guzmán, acting edgy and nervous, repeatedly goes over to the shower area to check on something happening behind the short wall, and even bends down to apparently help pull something.

The video also appears to show a tablet or iPad lying near Mr. Guzmán’s bed. Analysts said the electronic device isn’t allowed in the prison. And that isn’t the only special treatment the crime boss looked to be getting. The video shows him sporting a full head of hair, when regulations call for prisoners to have their hair fully cropped.

As the days have passed, new details have emerged to paint a more complete picture of one of the most elaborate escapes in modern times, one that included the use of birds, an oxygen tank and a motorcycle mounted on rails to make a quick getaway.

Investigators found two live song birds in paper sacks Sunday when they entered the tunnel, much of which appeared to have been dug with shovels and picks. Their theory is the birds were used like the proverbial canary in a coal mine to test the air quality inside underground tunnel that had been dug out 30 feet below the surface of the jail to help ensure Mr. Guzmán’s safety.

The 20-by-20 inch square removed from the shower floor appeared to have been neatly cut as if with a scalpel from inside the cell, said Omar Fayad, a senator who toured Mr. Guzmán’s cell on Monday along with colleagues and officials. The floor section was removed whole, Mr. Fayad said.

“It’s clear that they didn’t hammer or bang,” Mr. Fayad said Wednesday. “That surprised me a lot. Someone told me that such fine cuts are done with acid and a blowtorch. It appears they used a car jack to lift the piece because when we entered tunnel we saw a jack, cables and a ladder.”

The nearly mile-long tunnel itself is superbly engineered. It has a rail. By the time Mr. Guzmán lowered himself down a ladder to the tunnel from his shower area, he would have found a brightly lighted passage with a motorcycle mounted on steel rails. The motorcycle only had one back wheel—the front was mounted to a small pushcart.

Officials said Mr. Guzmán may have sat in the push cart while an associate drove the motorcycle. As they went along the tunnel, they appeared to have smashed the light bulbs along the way to ensure that anyone giving chase would be in the dark.

Also found at the tunnel exit: oxygen tanks that suggested Mr. Guzmán was supplied with fresh air during his journey to freedom.

Soldiers and police continue guarding the nondescript house where Mr. Guzmán emerged from the tunnel. They are manning roadblocks for hundreds of miles surrounding the Altiplano prison, which sits on the highland plains a 90-minute drive west of Mexico City.

“El Chapo went through that hole like Alice into Wonderland,” said taxi driver José Luis Ávila, who like many Mexicans was enjoying a bitter chuckle at the government’s expense.