The wife of jailed Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, has been released from jail in the US.

Emma Coronel pleaded guilty to drug trafficking charges and was sentenced to three years in jail in November 2021, a sentence which was later reduced.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons confirmed her release.

It is believed the 34-year-old left a halfway house in California, where she was moved from federal prison in June.

Her husband is serving a life sentence in a supermax jail in Colorado.

Last month, he sent a handwritten letter requesting his wife and their two daughters be allowed to visit him in the maximum security prison.

El Chapo Guzmán, 66, was found guilty in 2019 of running the Sinaloa cartel.

The Mexico-based transnational criminal organisation is estimated by US law enforcement officials to have smuggled more than 1,000 tonnes of cocaine, marijuana, methamphetamines and heroin into the US.

The cartel’s hitmen kidnapped, tortured and killed members of rival gangs to consolidate its power.

The Sinaloa cartel also bribed police officers and high-ranking politicians in Mexico and across Central America to turn a blind eye to drug shipments or even tip the cartel off about impending raids.

El Chapo and Coronel’s Marriage Life

Emma Coronel first met Guzmán when she was 17 years old and competing in a local beauty pageant.

They formalised their relationship in a ceremony when Emma Coronel was 18 – although it is not clear if their marriage was ever officially registered with the Mexican authorities.

Coronel, who holds dual US-Mexican nationality, travelled to California in 2011 to give birth to the couple’s twin daughters, a move which means the children have US citizenship.

At her trial, prosecutors said Coronel had played a key role in her husband’s activities.

She was also accused of having acted as a messenger for her husband both during his time on the run and behind bars, relaying orders to his cartel lieutenants and to his sons with his previous wives.

Before her arrest in February 2021, Coronel said that she did not recognize the gruesome testimony given about her husband in court, instead describing him as “an excellent father, friend, brother, son, partner”.

Prosecutors said she was well aware of her husband’s criminal activities and “understood the scope of the Sinaloa cartel’s drug trafficking”.