It is an unusual trial that opens on Monday in New York: that of Joachim Guzman. Extradited to the United States on January 19, 2017, the 61-year-old Mexican man led for 25 years one of the most powerful cartels in the world.

A kind of judicial epilogue for this great specialist of the escape which fueled his legend and earned him an international notoriety.

In 2016 is the last arrest of this sexagenarian ego excess in a villa in Los Mochis, on the Pacific coast, in his stronghold of Sinaloa. Extradited to the United States on 19 January 2017 in a Manhattan prison, "El Chapo" is no more than the shadow of himself: isolated in his cell 23 hours a day, after two escapes in Mexico, only his lawyers and his seven-year-old twins can visit him. Even his wife Emma Coronel, a 32-year-old beauty queen, is forbidden to visit.

This is the most powerful drug baron in the world who, at pre-trial hearings, could only speak to his lawyers. In his rare public statements, he only complained. "I suffer from headaches every day. I vomit almost daily. Two molars that were not treated me very much daily. Two molars that were not treated me suffer a lot , " he wrote in February in a letter to the judge responsible for his case, Brian Cogan. "I live a nightmare 24 hours a day."

The one also called "Le Courtaud" , a nickname due to its small size, about 1.67 m, is judged to have led for 25 years the most powerful drug cartel in the world. Prosecutors also claim to be able to demonstrate that he has sponsored at least 37 murders. They also claim to have a mountain of evidence of guilt at the eleven indictments, some 300,000 pages of documents, 117,000 audio recordings and a quantity of photos and videos. Many documents remain confidential as is the list of former associates, employees or rivals of Joaquin Guzman called to testify. Some enjoy the protection of the US government under new identities. Others are held in special prisons to prevent any retaliation.

The Sinaloa cartel headed by Joaquin Guzman has shipped more than 154 tons of cocaine and huge quantities of heroin, methamphetamines and marijuana to the United States, worth an estimated $ 14 billion. According to American prosecutors, "El Chapo" is the most powerful narco-trafficker since Colombian Pablo Escobar, who died in 1993. If he is sentenced, he faces life imprisonment.

The downfall is tough for the one who led 25 years in one of the most powerful cartels on the planet, former hero of the culture narco and "narcocorridos", these Mexican ballads that tell the leaders of cartels.

Born April 4, 1957 to a poor family in a mountain village in Sinaloa, northwestern Mexico, Joaquin Guzman worked from childhood selling oranges, sweets and drinks.

As he tells the actor Sean Penn during an interview in October 2015 supposed to remain secret but which will contribute to his arrest, he starts, teenager, to cultivate marijuana and poppy, for lack of alternatives. "The only way to get money, to buy food, to survive, was to grow the opium poppy, marijuana, so at that age, I started to grow and sell it. " , He confided to the American actor.

The chief of the cartel of Guadalajara Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, nicknamed "the godfather" of the modern Mexican cartels recruits him. After the arrest of Gallardo in 1989, Guzman founded with three associates the cartel of Sinaloa, in a few years becoming an empire with European and Asian ramifications. "I supply more heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana than anyone in the world. I have fleets of submarines, planes, trucks and boats, " he boasted in the interview with Sean Penn, published in Rolling Stone magazine.

His fortune put him on Forbes magazine's list of the richest men in the world, before escaping in 2013 because of the expenses needed to protect him.

At least two of his sons are accused by US authorities of playing an "important" role in his cartel. Another son, Edgar, was shot in 2008.

Robin Hood helping the poor and ridiculing the powerful, El Chapo has also waged an ultra-violent fight against rivals, a war between cartels that still ravage Mexico today.

The selection of the jury must start this Monday, in camera, a measure reserved for the most dangerous criminals.