The mother of convicted drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman said Saturday that the US Embassy in Mexico City granted her a visa so she can visit her son in prison.

Sitting in a wheelchair in front of the embassy, Consuelo Loera said that she and two daughters were both approved Saturday for visas to travel to the United States.

"Thank God, the US Embassy gave me the permission," she said in a feeble voice while surrounded by a throng of journalists: Loera said she hasn't seen her son in more than four years. She added that she has yet to receive the actual visa or set a date for her trip.

Mexican President Andrs Manuel Lopez Obradr lobbied for the visa to be issued after receiving a letter from Loera asking for assistance.

"El Chapo," who led the Sinaloa drug cartel and twice escaped from Mexican prisons before he was extradited to New York, was convicted in February of running an industrial-scale smuggling operation.

The three-month trial heard tales of grisly killings, political payoffs, cocaine hidden in jalapeno cans and jewel-encrusted guns.

He is due to be sentenced this month and faces a life term in a maximum-security US prison selected to guard against another of the jail breakouts that made him a folk hero in Mexico.

Guzman's lawyers did not deny his crimes but argued that he was a fall guy for government witnesses who were more evil than he was.

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