El Chapo trial: Joaquín Guzman joked about arming infant daughter with AK47 in texts to wife, court hears

When asked about his distorted facial features in court, witness Juan Carlos Ramirez Abadia explained he had undergone at least three surgeries that altered "my jawbone, my cheekbones, my eyes, my mouth, my ears, my nose."

Juan Carlos Ramirez Abadia was extradited to the US, where he pleaded guilty to murder and drug charges and agreed to become a government witness in major narcotics prosecutions like Joaquin Guzman’s.

He was the third former drug dealer to testify so far at the trial in federal court in Brooklyn, where Guzman has pleaded not guilty to conspiracy and all other charges.

In court, Ramirez Abadia described a meeting at a hotel in Mexico in the early 1990s where he allegedly struck a deal with Guzman. As part of the terms the Colombian cartel would fly his cocaine into Mexico for the Sinaloa cartel to smuggle it into Los Angeles and New York City, the witness said.

When Guzman asked for the purest product possible, Ramirez Abadia told the court was happy to oblige because he wanted "a reputation for myself for my cocaine being so good," he said.

Guzman also demanded a bigger cut of the proceeds than other Mexican kingpins because his network was so efficient at getting it across the border.

"I'm a lot faster. You'll see," the witness recalled Guzman bragging.

After Ramirez Abadia relocated to Brazil and redid his face, he looked so different that drug investigators were forced to use voice recognition technology to make the positive identification needed for a search warrant, his lawyer said after his capture. He was found in a luxurious home with a gym, sauna, swimming pool and nearly $1 million in stashed cash, according to federal officials.

Despite testimonies from hugely important witnesses from the world of Mexican drug trafficking, some fear the alleged extent of Guzman's bribery will never come to light.

There have been certain restrictions on evidence in this case, The New York Times reports. For example Judge Brian Cogan decided a government witness could not testify about alleged payments of more than £4.7 million in bribes to a Mexican president.

While the president was never identified, the judge ruled the allegation would embarrass “individuals and entities” and distract from assessing 'El Chapo's' guilt.

Miguel Angel Martinez, who says he was a former assistant to Guzman and is now a prosecution witness, also testified on Wednesday this week.

In his testimony Martinz claimed 'El Chapo' tried to kill him four times, with one murder attempt after an ominous serenade by a Mariachi band.

Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman denies these allegations, and his defence claims he was not part of the leadership of the Sinaloa cartel is being framed by Martinz and others.

Martinez claimed that one of the attempts to take his life was while he was in prison.

"They started yelling at me, asking me what my shoe size was," Martinez told the court in Brooklyn, New York. The other inmates wanted to get his shoes, he said, because in their minds, "I was actually dead."

In his testimony, Miguel Angel Martinez said he became a loyal servant of Guzman, helping him arrange massive shipments of cocaine flown in from Colombia that made his boss a fortune. The two became so close, he said, that Guzman was the godfather to his son.

Martinez told the jury on Wednesday that after Guzman landed in prison in 1993, he tried to look after his friend's family and handle his legal fees.

Miguel Angel Martinez later faced his own issues in jail, he told the court.

In the first jail in Mexico City where he was locked up, he was cornered in his cell by other prisoners and stabbed 15 times, he said. After he was released from the hospital, he was returned to very same cell — with the same cellmates.

At night, "I actually heard them polishing their knives, their blades," he said.

He survived a second knife attack before he was transferred to another jail, where the interest in his shoe size made it clear there that anyone who killed him would get money from the cartel, he said. He was stabbed again while making a phone call, treated again and put in solitary confinement for his protection.

One night, Martinez told the court, he heard a band outside the jail where he was incarcerated playing a favourite "corrido" folk song of Guzman's — "Un Puno De Tierra" — over and over, thought the night. It was about living life to the fullest because "once you die, you can't take anything with you," he said.

The next morning, someone armed with a pistol and a grenade appeared outside his cell, he said. The would-be assassin struggled with a guard who refused to open the cell before tossing the grenade inside. He survived the explosion, he said, by taking cover in the cell's bathroom.

Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman denies these allegations.