The Manhattan jail which is home to notorious drug lord Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman has been described in a report as having 'worse conditions that Guantanamo Bay'.
The remarks were made by a former inmate at the Metropolitan Correctional Centre, where El Chapo was taken to after being arraigned on a list of murder and drug trafficking charges by a Brooklyn Federal court last Friday.
Ahmed Ghailani, who made the comments, had spent time at Guantanamo before he ended up at the MCC, serving a life-sentence for his part in the bombings of two American embassies in East Africa in 1998.
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Metropolitan Correctional Centre. Credit: PA
Speaking to a psychiatrist, Ghailani is reported by the Daily News to have said he found the detention camp 'more pleasant' and more 'relaxed'.
The report went on to state that Ghailani was able to spend time with others and had access to DVDs during his stay at Guantanamo, which is not the case at MCC. He also complained of 'frequent strip searches' by the guards at MCC. Ghailani did concede that the legal process in the US was 'more fair' than the one he had been through in Cuba, though.
El Chapo was extradited to the US from Mexico, where he had previously managed to escape from two high-security prisons. If he plans to carry off another Houdini act at the MCC, then he's in for a tough time, because reports claim that he will most likely be placed on the 10 South wing - a section which is home to the jail's most dangerous inmates, who are all kept in solitary confinement.
MCC holds around 800 prisoners and is renowned for its spot-on security measures, which is good considering El Chapo does like to pull an Andy Dufresne every now and again.
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Credit: ABC News
Uzair Parache, who was held at the MCC for two years for supplying material to support Al Qaeda, is also reported to have said that it was usual for prisoners to partially lose their eyesight because the lights are kept off for 23 or 24 hours a day.
David Patton, one of El Chapo's legal representatives, told the New York Times that the MCC is horrifying. He said: "If you wanted to intentionally design a place to drive people mad, you'd be hard pressed to do better.
"The fluorescent lights are always on... The only sound is the occasional clanking of metal when doors are opened and closed."
Who is El Chapo?
Mexican drug lord Joaquin Guzmán, nicknamed El Chapo, was the formidable leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, which is often noted for being the largest and most powerful drug trafficking organisation in the western hemisphere.
El Chapo was born in 1957 into a farming family; he first discovered drug trafficking when he was working in opium poppy and marijuana fields. Guadalajara cartel boss Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, also known as the Godfather, took a young El Chapo under his wing and before long El Chapo was making links with Colombian traffickers.
He went on to set up his own cartel, the Sinaloa, in the late 80s. Staggeringly, he is thought to be responsible for a quarter of all drugs entering the US via Mexico.
A shoe shine holds a Chapo for President sign. Credit: PA
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In 1993 he was almost assassinated by a rival gang; he had a narrow escape and this trend for being slippery would follow him. Shortly after the attempt on his life he was arrested and sentenced to 20 years.
He gained notoriety around the world in 2001 when he escaped from the maximum-security Puente Grande after hiding in a laundry basket. He then spent 13 years on the outside, before being arrested.
You would think that after escaping once and being at large for 13 years, they'd keep a closer eye on him, but the Altiplano prison didn't learn from Puente Grande's mistakes and, less than two years after he was sent there, he escaped. This time he went fully Shawshank and created a one mile-long tunnel.
Credit: PA
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El Chapo seems happy enough with his reputation; he's become a sort of pop-culture icon, he's taken part in interviews with several media outlets, including Rolling Stone magazine in which he was interviewed by Sean Penn, for some reason. He told Penn there "...was no other way to work in our economy, to be able to make a living."
El Chapo was formally named as Public Enemy Number One by the Chicago Crime Commission back in 2013. He was recaptured in January last year and was sent back to Altiplano. Shortly after his recapture, the US applied for his extradition, which was granted.
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