El Chapo's trial opens with chilling details

Opening statements finally began Tuesday in the trial for Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman — with prosecutors describing some of the notorious accused drug lord’s most heinous acts for jurors, along with his weapons of choice.

Some of his favorites include a diamond-encrusted handgun with his initials on it and a gold-plated AK-47,”said federal prosecutor Adam Fels.

He recounted how Guzman allegedly ordered hits on his own loved ones and used a small private army — consisting of hundreds of men “armed with assault rifles” — to take out his rivals.

He ordered his hit men to locate, kidnap, torture, interrogate, shoot and kill those rivals, Fels said.

Not even Guzman’s own family members were immune.

In one instance, the 61-year-old defendant “ordered the murder of one of his cousins — simply because he was suspected of cooperating with authorities,” Fels said, noting how the accused Mexican kingpin’s thirst for blood helped fuel his “vast drug empire.”

Money, drugs, murder and a vast global narcotics trafficking organization — that is what this case is about, and that is what the evidence in this case will prove, Fels said.

Guzman’s defense team, meanwhile, claimed during its opening statements that prosecutors were trying to use him as a “scapegoat.”

There’s another side to this story, an uglier side, said attorney Jeffrey Lichtman.

This is a case that will require you to throw out much of what you were taught.

According to Lichtman, the real criminal mastermind is Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada — current leader of the infamous Sinaloa Cartel. The lawyer described the 70-year-old former poppy-field worker as “the biggest drug trafficker in Mexico.”

[Zambada] has been allowed to operate for the last 55 years because he pays for it, Lichtman said.

He bribes the current president of Mexico and for good measure, the previous one as well.

The US government pretends to want him. But somehow they can’t figure out where he is,” Lichtman added.

He noted how Zambada’s own brother was cooperating with the US government in this case, along with two of his sons — one of whom is expected to be the prosecution’s first witness.

These are “people who will make your skin crawl when they testify, Lichtman said.

The government is using these gutter human beings to build their case. … These are people who will be out soon among us. Some of them are already out.

The government is willing to do this, Lichtman said, because the conviction of Chapo Guzman is the biggest prize they could ever imagine.

Open your minds to the possibility that government officials can be bribed, he told jurors.

That American law enforcement can also be crooked.