Wife of 'El Chapo' released from US prison

Emma Coronel Aispuro, the wife of jailed Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, was released on Wednesday after serving nearly two years of a three-year prison sentence for drug trafficking and money laundering.

The 34-year-old Coronel was released from a halfway house in Long Beach, California, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

The former beauty queen, who married the ruthless drug czar when she was a teenager, was sentenced to three years in prison by a US judge in November 2021.

Guzman was extradited from Mexico to the United States in 2017 and sentenced in July 2019 to life in prison.

During her trial, prosecutors and her defense lawyers said Coronel was not involved in the core business of Guzman's Sinaloa Cartel, which shipped hundreds of tons of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and other drugs into the United States.

"The defendant's actual role was a minimal one," prosecutor Anthony Nardozzi said.

"The defendant was not a leader, organizer, boss or other type of manager," Nardozzi said. "Rather she was a cog in a very large wheel of a criminal organization."

Coronel, who helped facilitate Guzman's spectacular 2015 escape from a Mexican prison, regularly attended her husband's trial in New York.

A dual US-Mexican citizen, Coronel was able to move in and out of the United States freely until she was arrested at Dulles International Airport outside Washington in February 2021.