Indian envoy warns of 'big red line,' days after charges laid in Nijjar case
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
A U.S. judge sentenced the wife of imprisoned Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman to three years in prison on Tuesday, after she pleaded guilty to helping the Sinaloa drug cartel.
Before her sentencing in a federal court in Washington, Emma Coronel Aispuro, 32, pleaded with U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras to show her mercy.
"With all due respect, I address you today to express my true regret for any and all harm that I may have done, and I ask that you and all the citizens of this country forgive me," she said in Spanish through an interpreter.
She added that she feared the judge might find it difficult to forgive her because she is Guzman's wife. "Perhaps for this reason you feel there is a need for you to be harder on me, but I pray that you not do that," she added.
Coronel pleaded guilty in June to three counts of conspiring to distribute illegal drugs, conspiring to launder money and of engaging in financial dealings with the Sinaloa drug cartel.
Federal prosecutors on Tuesday asked that a four-year prison term be imposed on Coronel, adding that she would be forfeiting US$1.5 million as part of her sentence.
"While the overall effect of the defendant's conduct was significant, the defendant's actual role was a minimal one. The defendant acted primarily in support of her husband," federal prosecutor Anthony Nardozzi said.
He noted that after her arrest, she "quickly accepted responsibility for her criminal conduct."
Coronel, a U.S.-born former beauty queen who married Guzman while she was a teenager, was arrested at Dulles International Airport outside Washington in February. She and Guzman have nine-year-old twin daughters together.
As part of her plea agreement with prosecutors, Coronel admitted to acting as a courier between Guzman and other members of the Sinaloa cartel while he was being held in Mexico's Altiplano prison following his 2014 arrest.
Guzman used those communications to plan his 2015 escape from the prison, through an underground tunnel built by the cartel leading to the shower in his cell.
The drug lord was recaptured in January 2016 and extradited one year later to the United States.
He was convicted in February 2019 of drug trafficking, conspiracy, kidnapping, murder and other charges, and later sentenced to life in prison.
Coronel's attorney on Tuesday stressed that she was swept into the world of drug trafficking while still a minor, and deserved mercy.
"She met Joaquin Guzman when she was a minor. She was 17 years old, and she married him on her 18th birthday," said Jeffrey Lichtman, a defense attorney who also represented Guzman in his U.S. trial three years ago.
Lichtman added that Coronel now finds herself in danger, noting that anonymous law enforcement sources told news media that she was cooperating with the government.
"I'm not sure that she could ever go back home," he said.
Contreras said that he took her background into consideration when weighing the sentence, as well as the fact that she will be the sole caretaker for her children due to her husband's life sentence.
"Good luck to you," he told her as the hearing concluded. "I hope that you raise your twins in a different environment than you've experienced today."
(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Scott Malone, Rosalba O'Brien and Paul Simao)
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
With Donald Trump sitting just feet away, Stormy Daniels testified Tuesday at the former president's hush money trial about a sexual encounter the porn actor says they had in 2006 that resulted in her being paid to keep silent during the presidential race 10 years later.
The U.S. paused a shipment of bombs to Israel last week over concerns that Israel was approaching a decision on launching a full-scale assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah against the wishes of the U.S.
Footage from dozens of security cameras in the area of Drake’s Bridle Path mansion could be the key to identifying the suspect responsible for shooting and seriously injuring a security guard outside the rapper’s sprawling home early Tuesday morning, a former Toronto homicide detective says.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
Susan Buckner, best known for playing peppy Rydell High School cheerleader Patty Simcox in the 1978 classic movie musical 'Grease,' has died. She was 72.
Accused killer Jeremy Skibicki could have a challenging time convincing a judge that he is not criminally responsible for the deaths of four Indigenous women, a legal analyst says.
A Calgary bylaw requiring businesses to charge a minimum bag fee and only provide single-use items when requested has officially been tossed.
Two Nova Scotia men are dead after a boat they were travelling in sank in the Annapolis River in Granville Centre, N.S., on Monday.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.