Metro

El Chapo seen for last time before heading to Colorado supermax prison

Get to El Chopper!

Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzman took in the sights of New York City one last time early Friday, when he was loaded onto an NYPD helicopter and flown off for the start of his trip to a supermax prison.

The Post exclusively captured shots of the ruthless former Sinaloa cartel leader arriving at the Wall Street heliport under heavily armed police guard at about 3 a.m.

Guzman’s transfer was carefully executed. Once the chopper landed at 3 a.m., an NYPD Emergency Service Unit truck pulled up to the entrance. An unmarked police cruiser parked one block north and another ESU truck parked one block beyond the cruiser.

About 10 minutes later, the billionaire drug boss was transported across the Brooklyn Bridge in a black SUV with an escort of more than a dozen NYPD cars with their lights on.

Two armed men in military fatigues took Guzman out of the SUV and hauled him onto the chopper, all under the watchful eye of an armed police officer.

The aircraft took off at 3:20 a.m., with another NYPD helicopter in tow, to head to La Guardia Airport.

Sources told The Post that the pint-sized former kingpin is bound for ADX Florence near Florence, Colo. — the only federal supermax prison in the nation — to join the likes of “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski, Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and 1993 World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef.

On Wednesday, Guzman, 62, was sentenced to life in prison plus 30 years for his 25-year reign over the massive drug enterprise.

His lawyers requested for him to be held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan for 60 days as they work on his appeals case, but he was promptly shipped off to the supermax.

Robert Hood, a former warden of fortress-like lockup in the foothills of the Rockies, said Guzman would likely be held in the prison’s most isolated area, Range 13, and would be barred from visits from his beauty-queen wife, Emma Aispuro Colonel.

“It’s not a place designed for humanity,” said Hood, 67, who ran the prison from 2002 to 2005.

Only two inmates in the prison’s 25-year history have been held at Range 13 — Yousef and Tommy Silverstein, a triple murderer who spent decades in solitary confinement, according to Hood.

“It’s one click away from the death penalty,” Hood said. “All of a sudden, one day you’re put in a box and not cared about — that’s the punishment.”

On the prison’s menu for Friday-night dinner was chicken fajitas, cilantro rice, black beans, corn and salsa.

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El Chapo being escorted to an awaiting helicopter at the Downtown Manhattan Heliport in New York, NY
El Chapo is escorted to a waiting helicopter at the Downtown Manhattan Heliport in New York.Christopher Sadowski
Police on guard while El Chapo was escorted to an awaiting helicopter
Christopher Sadowski
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Police on guard while El Chapo was escorted to an awaiting helicopter
Christopher Sadowski
Seth Gottfried
El Chapo being escorted to an awaiting helicopter at the Downtown Manhattan Heliport in New York, NY
Christopher Sadowski
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