Abel Barajas/Reform Agency
Saturday, January 07, 2023 | 07:35
Mexico City.- The defense of Ovidio Guzmán maintained in yesterday’s hearing at the Altiplano Prison that his client suffers from depression and anxiety and that he recently had surgery in which his stomach was almost completely removed.
Therefore, he asked the judge to instruct the prison authorities to provide him with medical treatment and access to his medications.
Guzmán entered the room at 1:29 p.m., dressed in gray pants and a white face mask. He is a very thin young man with a stooped posture who should barely exceed 1.60 meters in height, a white complexion, very pale, and a deep voice, although low in volume.
“Without prejudging whether or not (his health problems) are true, it is instructed to provide care and medication for each of his ailments as soon as possible,” the judge agreed.
Ovidio is much thinner than he looked in the photos that circulated in October 2019, after the “Culiacanazo”.
During the hearing he maintained a stooped posture and his fair complexion seemed too pale in contrast to the dark brown of his hair. Yesterday she still had her beard and her hair had not been cut.
From 1:30 p.m. to 2:21 p.m., when the procedure took place, the room was guarded by about 10 elements of the National Guard.
The perimeter of the Altiplano Prison, where this justice center is located, was also surrounded by agents of the corporation and the military.
At all times, “El Ratón” was attentive to the incidents of his informative audience. He only used his voice to identify himself and express monosyllables in response to the judge’s requirements.
With a “yes”, he appointed the three litigants who accompanied him as his defenders: Juan Clemente, Julio Segura and Díaz Mendieta.
“Mr. Ovidio Guzmán, would you like to make a demonstration?” Asked the judge.
“No, none,” he replied in a deep voice, although low in volume and with a marked Sinaloan accent.
“Is the information clear to you?” asked the judge, “yes,” said “Chapito.” The only times he said more than two words were when he pronounced his name, at the beginning, and, at the end, when he also designated as their defenders two other Sinaloan lawyers who were not present at yesterday’s hearing.
“Juan Rivera Angulo and Ernesto López Benítez,” said Ovidio, leaning towards the microphone, sitting in the middle of his three lawyers who assisted him during the process. They deny closing the hearing
At 11:00 a.m., when the hearing was scheduled and Ovidio Guzmán López was not yet in the courtroom, Prosecutor Elizabeth Ramírez Vicente asked Judge Salazar Hernández to agree that this procedure be private, that is, without the public or the media.
His main argument was that the United States asked to safeguard the information on his arrest request for extradition purposes, in addition to the fact that it was confidential information, in accordance with the General Law on Transparency and Access to Public Information.
The judge, however, reversed that this request had no legal basis, since the hearing was for information and not to know the content of the formal request with the full accusation, which the United States must deliver no later than 60 days. .
