Alasdair Baverstock

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El Chapo taunts Mexican police over Twitter

Mexico drugs lord Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman has taken to Twitter yet again to taunt the world over his astonishing jailbreak. The billionaire cartel boss - one of the world's most wanted men - is believed to have paid off prison guards $50million to secure his escape - and has promised that if he's caught, he'll just do it again.

The powerful Sinaloa Cartel boss escaped the maximum security Altiplano prison by disappearing down a hole in the shower of his cell and through a mile-long tunnel dug underneath the prison.

Now on the run in one of the biggest manhunts Mexico has ever seen, the smug kingpin is taunting the federal police - tweeting: 'It could be that something that has only happened once will never be repeated. But anything that happens twice, will certainly occur a third time.'

El Chapo's tweet referred to the fact that this is the second time he has got out. In 2001, he broke out hidden inside a laundry basket and was on the run for 13 years.

Mexican lawmakers have admitted that at least 18 minutes passed before anyone at the prison raised the alarm.

He took out a 50cm by 50cm grill in the shower floor of his cell and climbed down a 32ft shaft into the complex tunnel system.

The tunnel would have taken at least a year to build with four miners working 10-hour shifts - with digging and drilling under the guards' noses. The prison is fitted with censors which are meant to detect drilling.

In another Tweet on the run, El Chapo, 60, told his 500,000 followers: 'The years fly by and I've continued to withstand the hardest hits, but those who truly know me know that no one has ever stopped me.'

His Twitter feed - which has risen to 500,000 followers since Saturday's escape, is thought to have been run by his son Ivan Guzman while he was in jail - but since his breakout the cocaine king has seemingly taken to social media with relish.

He has also used Twitter to announce which of his enemies is to die now that he is on the loose  - and threatened Donald Trump for his disparaging comments about Mexico. El Chapo told Trump: 'If you keep p****** me off I'm going to make you eat your words you f****** blonde milk-s*****'.

In Mexico, a milk-s****** is a homophobic slur.

The drugs lord took aim at the Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto saying: 'And you @EPN, don't call me a delinquent because I give people work unlike you you cowardly politician.'

He also wrote: 'There's no jail for such a big midget'. El Chapo means midget in Spanish and Guzman measures only five foot six inches tall.

On Monday, he advised would-be mafia bosses: 'Precision is more valuable than strength, that's what has worked for me'.

In the hugely embarrassing episode, Mexican authorities said they are investigating building work being done around the prison which masked the sound of drilling El Chapo's tunnel.

Prison told Mexican newspaper La Reforma the construction work was 'extremely noisy' - and that a number of prisoners had complained about it.

Investigators are probing the precision with which El Chapo's mining engineers accomplished the feat.

They suspect at least some of the prison staff were involved in the breakout. Thirty three guards were arrested after the breakout, 12 have been released and 21 remain in custody in the same prison they were guarding.

Among them is Valentin Cardenas Lerma, the sacked prison director.

Cardenas will be questioned by a federal tribunal next week - a committee to probe his involvement El Chapo's escape.

The guards' families have been protesting outside the federal attorney's office in Mexico City over their detention without being arrested or charged.

Read the original story on the Daily Mail