A former mistress of feared Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman told the jury in his U.S. trial on Thursday she was “traumatized” after a 2014 escape from one of his safe houses with Mexican marines on their trail.
Testifying for the U.S. Attorney’s office in federal court in Brooklyn, Lucero Sanchez Lopez, a local lawmaker in Guzman’s home state of Sinaloa, also gave a shocking recount of her relationship with Guzman, saying that she often feared for her life.
“I didn’t want for him to mistrust me because I thought he could also hurt me,”
Lucero Sanchez Lopez, 29, testified. “I was confused about my own feelings over him. Sometimes I loved him and sometimes I didn’t.”
She said once, while the two were eating dinner in 2012, Guzman told her that anyone who betrayed him would be executed.
Guzman, 61, who was extradited to the United States in 2017, has been on trial since November on charges of trafficking cocaine, heroin and other drugs into the country as leader of the Sinaloa Cartel. His trial has provided a window into the operations of the cartel, which is one of the biggest drug trafficking organizations in the world.
