Drug lord ‘El Chapo’ is hallucinating and may be ‘going crazy’ in solitary confinement, lawyers say

On weekdays, drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán sits in a small, windowless cell for 23 hours a day. The light is always on. The air conditioning makes him shiver. His meals get slipped through a slot in the door.

His one remaining hour can be spent alone in an exercise room consisting of one treadmill and one stationary bike. On weekends, all 24 hours get spent alone in his cell in a wing known as 10 South in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan. Guzmán could distinguish day from night only by a clock he bought from the commissary - until guards one day took that away.

That is the picture that Guzmán’s defence attorneys painted of the prison conditions facing the former leader of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, a man regarded as the world’s most notorious drug trafficker. His attorneys filed documents on Monday asking Judge Brian Cogan to take Guzmán out of solitary confinement and to allow him visits with his wife, Emma Coronel.

Because of these austere conditions and his isolation from anyone but his appointed lawyers, the defence argued, Guzmán’s “physical and mental health have deteriorated further since his arrival in the United States.”

“He has difficulty breathing and suffers from a sore throat and headaches. He has recently been experiencing auditory hallucinations, complaining of hearing music in his cell even when his radio is turned off,” the defence team said.