El Chapo’s sons horrifically tortured their rivals before feeding them alive to their pet tigers, U.S. prosecutors have claimed.
Four of the drug kingpin’s offspring, known as “Los Chapitos”, have been charged with running a huge fentanyl supply operation into the US along with other members of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel.
Joaquin Guzman Lopez, 36, Jesus Alfredo Guzman Salazar, 37, and Ivan Guzman Salazar, 40, are accused of fronting the criminal empire centered around drug trafficking and torture.
The US warned they are “going after the entire network” as part of a crackdown on opioids, while the trio remain at large and continue to run the organisation.
The Drug Enforcement Administration have even put a $10 million bounty on Alfredo’s head in the hopes of tracking him down.
Their sibling Ovidio Guzman Lopez, 33, is already behind bars after being arrested on January 5 after a massive shootout that left at least 29 dead.
Another 24 others including some acting as drug “manufacturers and distributors” and armed security “managers” were also charged.
The brothers allegedly tested their drugs on captives before inflicting the most appalling torture and depravity imaginable.
Their infamous father and former Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán is currently serving a life sentence in the US.
Prosecutors say their fentanyl empire was fuelled by Chinese chemical companies, who have since been hit with sanctions.
To test the potency of the opioids, the Sinaloa cartel allegedly conducted chilling experiments on hostages before killing them.
According to the indictment from the Southern District of New York, rival traffickers and officials who threatened the cartel’s aims were regularly on the chopping block.
Victims are said to have been taken to a ranch belonging to Ivan Salazar – the leader of the Los Chapitos pack – where they would be tied up and tortured for information.
The headquarters was allegedly littered with military-grade weapons including bazookas, machine guns, grenade launchers and armored trucks.
Rivals and those who refused to cooperate while interrogated reportedly faced the ultimate punishment and would be fed – dead or alive – to pet tigers owned by the Salazar brothers.
Attorney General Merrick Garland dubbed it the “largest, most violent, and most prolific fentanyl trafficking operation in the world.”
He alleged that on one occasion, two of the Chapos “tested the potency of the cartel’s fentanyl on individuals who were tied down.”
“In another instance, those defendants experimented on a woman they had been ordered to shoot. Instead, they injected her repeatedly with fentanyl until she overdosed and died.”
Garland then referred to a third incident where an “addict died testing a batch of the cartel’s fentanyl”, saying the drugs were still sent to the US regardless.
The cartel are alleged to have begun focusing on the fentanyl trade when El Chapo’s sons took over the illegal enterprise.
US Drug Enforcement Agency Administrator Anne Milgram said the family would “kill, kidnap and torture anyone who gets in the way.”
“In Mexico, they fed their enemies alive to tigers, electrocuted them, waterboarded them, and shot them at close range with a 50-calibre machine gun,” she said at a news conference on Friday.
El Chapo’s son, nicknamed “The Mouse”, is currently awaiting extradition to the US after his arrest in Mexico earlier this year.
Ovidio Guzman Lopez faces life in jail after being indicted on six counts, including conspiracy to import and distribute fentanyl.
But his capture didn’t come peacefully, as cartel gunmen invaded an airport in a bid to recapture the son of the notorious drug kingpin.
The cartel’s armed wing set up roadblocks along the highways of Sinaloa and opened fire at army planes during the chaos.
Security forces were forced to free Ovidio in 2019 after he was briefly captured when the cartel launched an all-out war on the streets.
The forced release after the authorities were out-gunned by the cartels, personally ordered by President Lopez Obrador, was an embarrassing setback for the Mexican government.
Ovidio has allegedly helped to run the infamous Sinaloa Cartel since the extradition of his father to the United States in 2017.
Authorities believe he is also behind the murders of informants, a rival drug trafficker, and a popular Mexican singer who refused to sing at his wedding.
El Chapo is currently serving life in prison for trafficking hundreds of tons of drugs into the United States over a 25-year period.
The 66-year-old was convicted in 2019 of trafficking worth billions of dollars, as well as conspiring to murder his enemies.
He is being held at the United State’s most secure federal prison, supermax ADX Florence in Colorado.
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