Mexico City - The security chief of Mexico's jailed drug cartel boss Joaquin “Chapo” Guzman has been found dead with three other people in the north-western state of Sinaloa, officials said on Thursday.
The body of Manuel Alejandro Aponte Gomez, head of security for the man who had been considered the world's most powerful drug lord until his arrest in February, was found on Wednesday inside a construction materials business in Elota, in Sinaloa.
No one has come forward to claim his body and the prosecutor in Sinaloa, Marco Antonio Higuera Gomez, declined to say how Aponte Gomez died.
A source in the prosecutor's office said Aponte Gomez helped Guzman evade capture via a series of tunnels between homes he owns in the state capital Culiacan days before he was finally caught in Mazatlan on the Pacific coast.
Guzman has been described by Forbes magazine as one of the world's richest and most powerful criminals with a fortune estimated at $1.15 billion.
He is now being held in a maximum security prison.
As leader of the Sinaloa cartel, Mexico's biggest, Guzman was one of the main exporters of cocaine and marijuana to the United States. - AFP