Rights group concerned with EL Chapo

In this Jan. 8, 2016 file photo, Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman is escorted by army soldiers to a waiting helicopter, at a federal hangar in Mexico City, after he was recaptured from breaking out of a maximum security prison in Mexico.  AP

NEW YORK—This could make President Rodrigo Duterte seethe in anger.

Amnesty International, a human rights group that Mr. Duterte repeatedly cussed and lambasted for criticizing his war on drugs as violative of human rights, had requested to speak with jailed Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, over concerns that the terms of his detention are “unnecessarily harsh.”

The 59-year-old drug lord, who is currently in pretrial detention in Manhattan, reportedly spends the vast majority of his days in solitary confinement and has limited access to exercise and visitors, according to a letter from the human rights organization seen by Agence France-Presse (AFP)  on Thursday.

“We are concerned that the conditions imposed on Mr Guzman Loera appear to be unnecessarily harsh and to breach international standards for human treatment,” wrote Justin Mazzola, Amnesty’s deputy director of research, in a letter sent to the Eastern District of New York US attorney’s office.

Guzman’s court-appointed lawyers had said in a letter sent to Judge Brian Cogan on March 13 that the isolation he was subjected to at the New York federal prison was harming his physical and mental health.

They said Guzman had trouble breathing and suffered from a sore throat and headaches, and had been experiencing auditory hallucinations—he complained of hearing music in his cell even when his radio was turned off.

But US prosecutors dismissed those allegations, saying the drug baron was healthy and even learning English.

Amnesty’s Mazzola said in his letter that Guzman had extremely restricted access to fresh air or sunlight, and had not been able to see his wife since his January 19 extradition to the United States.

Guzman, the powerful Sinaloa cartel’s notorious leader, is accused of running one of the world’s biggest drug empires.

He escaped from a Mexican prison in 2001, was rearrested in 2014, then escaped a maximum security prison through a tunnel the following year.

He was recaptured in January 2016 and extradited to the United States a year later.

Mr. Duterte had compared the Philippine drug problem to that of Mexico, saying the Philippines was a few years away from being a narcostate. —AFP