Mexican Drug Lord Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman Escaped through a tunnel from the Altiplano Maximum Security Prison Saturday July 11,2015

 

El Chapo is the head of the Sinaloa cartel, Mexico’s largest drug-trafficking organization. His success in this illicit trade earned him both a place on the Forbes list of the world’s wealthiest men, and a cell in the special housing unit of Mexico’s most fortified prison, the Federal Social Readaptation Center No. 1, known as Altiplano

The Altiplano Federal Penitentiary complex in Almoloya de Juarez, is just 50 miles outside of the nation's capital Mexico City

El Chapo had been arrested on February 22, 2014, by an elite team of Mexican Marines at a condominium in the Pacific coast city of Mazatlán.

El Chapo escaped from his prison cell through a hole on the floor of his shower on Saturday July 11,2015
Pictures inside the cell of Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman show the 50cm-by-50cm grill in the shower floor

 

Guzman entered the hole Saturday night and climbed down a 32ft shaft into a complex tunnel system
When he escaped, Guzman left his TV lying on a concrete night table, tuned to a popular music show.

A motorcycle adapted to a rail sits under the half-built house where drug lord Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman made his escape through a tunnel from the Altiplano maximum security prison on Saturday

This photo provided by Mexico's attorney general, shows the exit of the tunnel they claim was used by the drug lord after he got away from the prison

Henchmen working for El Chapo spent a year digging a tunnel, leading from the inside of the Altiplano prison showers to the Santa Juana construction site nearly a mile away

 The tunnel was a miracle of underground engineering, and came complete with ventilation, electric lights and a motorbike fitted to rails, to help remove the massive amounts of earth and on which El Chapo could make his getaway

All that remains of El Chapo at Altiplano today is the grainy surveillance footage from his final moments in a private cell. The video, shot at 8:52 p.m., shows him walking to the shower stall, ducking behind a waist-high partition, and disappearing from view

El Chapo has now escaped from not one but two maximum-security federal prisons in Mexico, a feat believed to be the first of its kind in Mexican history. He escaped from the Puente Grande federal prison in the state of Jalisco in 2001.

A Public Safety Secretary of the Federal District (SSPDF) vehicle displays pictures of fugitive drug lord Guzman