El Chapo trial – live updates: Prosecutors seek sanctions over lawyers' 'communication with Joaquín Guzman's wife'

Guzman, 61, faces 17 criminal counts and a possible sentence of life in prison. He has been subject to exceptionally tight security protocols, known as special administrative measures or SAMs, thanks to his two escapes from high-security Mexican prisons and what prosecutors have described as a history of intimidating witnesses.

Prosecutors said in Tuesday’s motion that some people, whose names were redacted, “appear to have used cellular telephones in concert with an attorney visit to the defendant following two trial days last week to facilitate unauthorized and, under the SAMs, impermissible contact between the defendant and M. Coronel.”

Security is so stringent that Guzman was not even allowed a brief hug with Ms Coronel at the outset of the trial.

One witness yesterday had his appearance protected, with courtroom sketch artists not allowed to draw him.

“I knew that he was the boss,” Mr Martinez said when a prosecutor, Assistant US Attorney Michael Robotti, asked him about Guzman’s role in the organization. “Since I met him, he would give all of us orders.”

Guzman, 61, was extradited from Mexico in January 2017 and faces life in prison if convicted. His lawyers are seeking to prove that another drug lord, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, actually ran the cartel and used Guzman as a scapegoat.

Miguel Angel Martinez, who described himself as a former manager in the cartel, took the witness stand on the sixth day of Guzman’s drug trafficking trial, testifying under an agreement to cooperate with prosecutors. For his safety, court sketch artists were ordered not to draw an accurate likeness of him.

His name will be made public 

However, there are fears he could be targeted by the cartel.

The Mexican government has denied any suggestion of such allegations.

Today, another cooperating witness will take the stand – but his identity will be kept secret and the court room sketch artists will be kept from drawing his face.

A government witness at the U.S. trial of the Mexican drug lord known as El Chapo says his cartel bribed the country’s former top security chief and another person who once worked under the current president-elect.

Former cartel member Jesus Zambada testified Tuesday that in the mid-2000s he gave $6 million in drug money to the security chief, Genero Garcia Luna.

Zambada also claimed that more million-dollar payments were made to Gabriel Regino, who worked in the administration of Mexican President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s administration when Lopez Obrador was mayor of Mexico City.

Gabriel Regino, who worked for Mexico’s president-elect while he served as the former mayor of Mexico City, refuted the testimony claiming he was bribed by the Sinaloa cartel in 2005 while live-tweeting the trial.