Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman being extradited to US

 

LOS ANGELES (KABC) --

Drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman is being extradited to the United States, a spokesperson for the Mexican attorney general confirmed to ABC News on Thursday.

The spokesperson told the network that Guzman was in the air on Thursday.

U.S. officials said Guzman, who is in his late 50s, was already in U.S. custody and was being flown to New York.

The convicted crime boss had been held most recently in a prison near the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez.

He was recaptured a year ago after making a second brazen jailbreak and had fought extradition since then.

The U.S. Department of Justice said Guzman has been charged in six separate indictments throughout the United States in connection with his leadership of the Sinaloa Cartel.

Guzman is expected to be prosecuted in in the Eastern District of New York. One indictment in that district accuses Guzman of overseeing a trafficking cartel with thousands of members and billions of dollars in profits laundered back to Mexico.

It also claims that Guzman and other members of the cartel employed hit men who carried out murders, kidnappings and acts of torture. Guzman faces the possibility of life in a U.S. prison.

"The Justice Department extends its gratitude to the Government of Mexico for their extensive cooperation and assistance in securing the extradition of Guzman Loera to the United States," the DOJ said.

While on the run in the fall of 2015, Guzman held a secret meeting with actors Sean Penn and Kate del Castillo. The encounter was the subject of a lengthy article Penn published in Rolling Stone last January, right after Mexican marines re-arrested Guzman in the western state of Sinaloa.

In the interview, Guzman was unapologetic about his criminal activities, saying he had turned to drug trafficking at age 15 simply to survive.

"The only way to have money to buy food, to survive, is to grow poppy, marijuana, and at that age, I began to grow it, to cultivate it and to sell it. That is what I can tell you," he was quoted as saying in Penn's article.

The Associated Press contributed to this report