Lawyers for drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman on Friday said he told them that guards at Mexico’s Altiplano prison would not let him sleep and that plans to make a movie about his life with actress Kate del Castillo are still on.
Guzman’s lawyer, Jose Refugio Rodriguez, said the drug lord still wants the movie to be made, but that the accused drug lord would not contribute money to it.
“He wants it to be done,” Rodriguez said, adding that Guzman’s belief is that Del Castillo is still in charge of the project. Del Castillo has not commented directly on whether the movie plans are still on.
“I know that Kate is Mr Joaquin Guzman’s representative ... she is authorized to do it,” he said. “And he told me on Monday that the movie has to go forward.”
Rodriguez said Guzman’s involvement would be to authorize the use of his name and story.
At an impromptu news conference outside the prison west of Mexico City, another of Guzman’s lawyer said guards waken Guzman every two hours at night and the practice is equivalent to torture.
“He said ‘what I want is for them to let me sleep. They are making me into a zombie,’” Juan Pablo Badillo quoted Guzman as saying.
Rodriguez gave The Associated Press a copy of Guzman’s testimony in one of the cases against him, in which the jailed drug lord accuses prison authorities of torturing him and said “I feel like a sleepwalker,” saying the practices had affected his health.
“My head and my ears always hurt and I feel bad all over,” Guzman said in the document.
However, the testimony also sheds light on the relatively permissive visitors’ schedule Guzman enjoyed at the maximum-security prison before his escape in July last year. It has been reduced since he was recaptured last month.
Guzman said he had been give an hour-and-a-half every day to talk to his lawyer, an hour in the sun in a prison patio, and a four-hour conjugal visit and a four-hour family visit every nine days.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing