Brooklyn Bridge Closed to Transport El Chapo to Trial

The Brooklyn Bridge was closed Monday morning as officials drove the notorious drug trafficker El Chapo from his high-security prison in Manhattan to a federal courthouse in Brooklyn for pretrial hearings, according to a report from USA Today. The judge has indicated that he will attempt to find an alternate solution to closing the heavily trafficked bridge twice daily to transport Joaquin Guzman to and from the courthouse, given that the trial is expected to take months. At trial, Guzman will face 17 criminal counts including drug trafficking, money laundering, and conspiracy to commit murder. But he is perhaps most notorious for escaping a high-security prison in Mexico in 2015, which launched a six-month manhunt before he was captured again. He was extradited to the United States in 2017. At the time, a U.S. attorney accused Guzman of “using violence, including torture and murder, to maintain an iron-fisted grip on the drug trade across the U.S.-Mexico border.”