Mexico City, May 7 (EFE).– Mexican authorities on Saturday transferred notorious drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” (Shorty) Guzman from the Altiplano prison in the central state of Mexico to another maximum-security prison in the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez, amid rumors about his possible extradition to the United States.

Mexico’s Government Secretariat confirmed that the transfer was due to construction work being carried out in the vicinity of Altiplano, a prison located in the municipality of Almoloya de Juarez where he had been held since being captured in his native state of Sinaloa on Jan. 8, six months after fleeing from that same prison through a 1.5-kilometer (0.9-mile) tunnel dug to his cell.

Since the drug lord’s escape on July 11, 2015, work has continued to be carried out near Altiplano on the Cutzamala water distribution system.

Federal government sources said then that motion sensors installed in the prison had been turned off for weeks because work on Cutzamala had set off false alarms, thus facilitating the construction of the tunnel and Guzman’s escape.

President Enrique Peña Nieto said in January that Mexico was working to turn the drug lord over as quickly as possible to authorities in the United States, where he faces dozens of drug-trafficking and money-laundering charges in federal courts in Arizona, Texas, California, Illinois, Florida and New York.

Guzman had always feared extradition to the United States, but one of his attorneys said earlier this year that El Chapo had urged him to accelerate the process due to the harsh prison conditions at Altiplano.

Mexican authorities this year stepped up security measures for Guzman, who had earlier broken out of a prison in the western state of Jalisco in 2001 and spent more than 13 years on the run before being recaptured on Feb. 22, 2014, in the Pacific resort city of Mazatlan.

Under his new prison regime, guards wake Guzman up every two hours, creating an “unbearable” situation that makes him feel as if he were being “tortured,” Juan Pablo Badillo, one of Guzman’s lawyers, told Radio Formula in February.

Guzman’s organization rose to become one of the main sources of illicit drugs entering the United States.

The Mexican kingpin’s wealth led to his name regularly appearing on Forbes magazine’s list of global billionaires. EFE