Guardian News and Media/Mexico City

Washington will seek the extradition of Mexico’s most-wanted man, the US attorney’s office announced, as reports emerged that Joaquin Guzman Loera spent his final days of freedom scrambling through tunnels and drains before ending up pinned to a bed in a beachside condominium unable to reach a Kalashnikov rifle lying on the floor.
The arrest of Guzman (known as El Chapo, or Shorty) in the Pacific resort city of Mazatlan just before dawn on Saturday punctured the myth of untouchability that had enveloped the capo since his escape from a high-security jail in January 2001 and his rise to the status of world’s most wanted trafficker.
News of Guzman’s capture has been triumphantly received in the US, where he is blamed for up to 80% of the drugs trade in cities such as Chicago, with the official response emphasising the successful collaboration of the US with the Mexican authorities. Robert Nardoza, a spokesman for the US attorney’s office in Brooklyn, said later that his office planned to seek Guzman’s extradition to face a variety of charges, although the Mexican ambassador to the US, Eduardo Medina Mora, had rejected calls for an American trial, saying it was important Guzman was tried in Mexico.
Over the years there were numerous reported sightings of the highest profile leader of the Sinaloa cartel - named after Guzman’s native state - which already had a long trafficking tradition as far afield as Argentina.
Guzman was believed to spend most of his time, however, in the mountainous regions where he grew up in poverty.
The Mexican attorney general, Jesus Murillo Karam, told reporters that the authorities began closing in on the 56-year-old drugs kingpin this month once they had located a network of safe houses, one of them owned by one of his former wives.
But by time the team on his trail had got through a reinforced steel door to at least one of those houses, the capo had slipped away via a tunnel leading to the city’s drainage system.
The manhunt in nearby Culiacan was accompanied by the arrest of second-tier figures in the Sinaloa cartel, along with dozens of weapons, which may have helped the authorities follow his trail to a 10-floor holiday apartment block called the Miramar, on the coastal road through the city of Mazatlan, Sinaloa’s main seaside resort.
Witnesses told local media that the capo had moved into the flat two days before his capture and kept a low profile. Few were willing to give many details about the much-feared drug lord.
According to a report in the Milenio newspaper, dozens of navy operatives isolated the block a little before 4am on Saturday, and quickly dominated a single lookout on the ground floor.
The Mazatlan apartment block was bereft of even door reinforcements. According to the Milenio report, the marines easily broke the lock on the door to flat 401 and immobilised Guzman on his bed before he had time to reach for his AK-47 rifle. A video of the apartment suggests Guzman was living in comfort, though not in a style befitting a frequent inclusion on Forbes’ rich lists.