The wife of accused Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman played an important role in plotting his 2015 escape from a Mexican prison and tried to help him escape again after he was recaptured the following year, one Guzman's former top lieutenants testified on Wednesday.
Guzman's wife, Emma Coronel, has attended nearly every day of her husband's trial in federal court in Brooklyn, New York. She was there on Wednesday as Damaso Lopez Nunez testified that Coronel carried messages from her imprisoned husband about digging a tunnel into his cell.
Guzman, 61, was extradited to the United States in 2017 and 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 lawyers have claimed he was framed by another powerful drug trafficker, Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada.