MEXICO CITY (AP) — The recapture of drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman took a surprise, Hollywood twist when a Mexican official said security forces located the world’s most-wanted trafficker thanks to a secret interview with U.S. actor Sean Penn.
Penn’s interview with Guzman, who has twice escaped from Mexican maximum security prisons, appeared late Saturday on the website of Rolling Stone magazine. It was purportedly held at an undisclosed hideout in northern Mexico in late 2015, several months before Guzman’s recapture Friday in Los Mochis, Sinaloa, after six months on the run.
In the interview, Guzman defends his work at the head of the world’s biggest drug trafficking organization. When asked if he is to blame for high addiction rates, he responds: “No, that is false, because the day I don’t exist, it’s not going to decrease in any way at all. Drug trafficking? That’s false.”
In the article, Penn describes taking elaborate security measures ahead of the clandestine meeting. But apparently they were not enough.
A Mexican federal law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not permitted to comment on the issue, told the Associated Press it was the Penn interview that led authorities to Guzman in a rural part of Durango state in October.
Authorities who later raided the area decided not to open fire on Guzman because he was with two women and child. He was able to escape, but they were able to later track him to a house in Los Mochis where Mexican marines nabbed him after a shootout that left five people dead.
The official said the meeting between Penn and Guzman was held in Tamazula, a community in Durango state that neighbors Sinaloa, home of Guzman’s drug cartel.
On Friday, Mexican Attorney General Arely Gomez said that Guzman’s contact with actors and producers for a possible film about him helped give law enforcement a lead on tracking and capturing the world’s most notorious drug kingpin.
In the Rolling Stone article, Penn wrote that Guzman was interested in having a movie filmed on his life. He said Guzman wanted Mexican actress Kate del Castillo, who facilitated the meeting between the men, involved in the project.
“He was interested in seeing the story of his life told on film, but would entrust its telling only to Kate,” wrote Penn, who appears in a photo posted with the interview shaking hands with Guzman whose face is uncovered
There was no immediate response from Penn’s representatives to the Mexican official’s comments.
Earlier Saturday, a federal law enforcement official said that Mexico is willing to extradite Guzman to the United States, a sharp reversal from the official position after his last capture in 2014.
“Mexico is ready. There are plans to cooperate with the U.S.,” said the Mexican official, who spoke on condition anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to comment.
But he cautioned that there could be a lengthy wait before U.S. prosecutors get their hands on Guzman. “You have to go through the judicial process, and the defense has its elements too.”
Top officials in the party of President Enrique Pena Nieto also floated the idea of extradition, which they had flatly ruled out before Guzman’s embarrassing escape from Mexico’s top maximum security prison on July 11 — his second from a Mexican prison.
But even if Mexican officials agree, Guzman’s attorney Juan Pablo Badillo told the Milenio newspaper that the defense already has filed six motions to challenge extradition requests.
“They can challenge the judge, challenge the probable cause, challenge the procedure,” said Juan Masini, former U.S. Department of Justice attache at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico. “That’s why it can take a long time. They won’t challenge everything at once … they can drip, drip, milk it that way.”
Guzman faces drug trafficking charges in several U.S. states and American officials hoped to extradite him after he was captured in February 2014.
At the time, Mexico’s government insisted it could handle the man who had already broken out of one maximum-security prison, saying he must pay his debt to Mexican society first.
Then-Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam said the extradition would happen only after he finished his sentence in Mexico in “300 or 400 years.”
Then Guzman escaped through an elaborate tunnel dug into Mexico’s most secure lock-up on July 11, thoroughly embarrassing Pena Nieto’s administration.
He also had escaped a similar maximum-security facility in 2001 while serving a 20-year sentence. Lore says he hid in a laundry cart, though many dispute that version. He spent 13 years on the lam.
Gomez said that one of Guzman’s key tunnel builders led officials to the neighborhood in Los Mochis that authorities had been watching for a month. The team noticed a lot of activity at the house Wednesday and the arrival of a car early Thursday morning. Authorities were able to determine that Guzman was inside the house, she said.
The marines were met with gunfire as they closed in.
Gomez said Guzman and his security chief, Ivan Gastelum, a.k.a “El Cholo Ivan,” were able to flee via storm drains and escape through a manhole cover to the street, where they commandeered getaway cars. Marines climbed into the drains in pursuit. They closed in on the two men based on reports of stolen vehicles and they were arrested on the highway.
According to a statement from the Mexican Attorney General’s office, the U.S. filed extradition requests June 25, while Guzman was in custody, and another Sep. 3, after he escaped. The Mexican government determined they were valid within the extradition treaty and sent them to a panel of federal judges, who gave orders for detention on July 29 and Sept. 8, after Guzman had escaped.
Those orders were not for extradition but just for Guzman to begin the extradition hearing process. Now that he is recaptured, Mexico has to start processing the extradition requests anew, according to the law.
The quickest he could be extradited would be six months, said a federal official who spoke on condition of anonymity, but it’s not likely because lawyers can file appeals. He said that they are usually turned down, but each one means a judge has to schedule a hearing.
“That can take weeks or months, and that delays the extradition,” he said. “We’ve had cases that take six years.”
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Associated Press writer Christopher Sherman in Los Mochis, Maria Verza in Mexico City and Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.
Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
I guess he doesn’t believe in Skype?
I read the Penn piece. Its kind of floridly written, but entertaining – and that is the sum total of what it is – entertainment. Its not really about El Chapo – in the end, Penn doesn’t have the opportunity to obtain an insightful interview. The resulting article lays the ground work for a movie which is focused on Penn and his efforts to secure the interview. One passage struck me as particularly bizarre – in which Penn gushes that El Chap graciously ignores his fart! Penn definitely has a political point of view regarding this man and his activities – his main point being that we Americans finance the drug trade and that putting so much of our public resources into taking out one human being will do nothing to stop the flow of drugs unless we stop demanding the product Also, its clear, El Chapo, like most dictators and criminal kingpins, is a janus – presenting a charismatic and likable face on one side, but we know there is also a very frightening, murderous face on the other. He rationalizes that he only kills in “self-defense.” So many movies and TV series have depicted these negative characters – and I like others have enjoyed watching Breaking Bad, The Sopranos and Goodfellows etc. I have no doubt El Chap looks at himself as a a kind of Robinhood hero – as would any self-respecting psychopath. I guess if Sean Penn is not prosecuted, we’ll see the film in a year.
You bookend your comment with two negative comments so its difficult to see your point. But from what I can gather…even thought Penn wrote “floridly,” made an odd comment about farting and may be prosecuted (why?) he did make a very important and valid point? Is that what you’re trying to say?
Yes – I agree with his point Penn’s point that putting resources into taking out one man is not going to stop anything or deter anyone so inclined. The only thing I think that will do that is to legalize and regulate recreational drugs. But my main point is – the piece is not even about El Chapo – its about Penn and his adventure to secure film rights. He may very well make a film which I will appreciate and will do some good in changing public policy. However, the thing that kind of creeps me out (in myself and others) is the fascination we have with criminal and psychopaths. I have read accounts that Hitler, when he wasn’t ordering mass murder, was very likable and kind to children and dogs. I think El Chapo is likely a psychopath also – in that he is particularly able to rationalize his actions and compartmentalize himself. He presented a gracious face to Sean – and Sean kind of melts – so impressed that El Chapo pretended not to notice his fart. That line did (as intended) make me laugh out loud – but it also made me think that Penn was much too grateful for the audience with the Man and beholding to his hospitality. Penn initiated this meeting under the pretext of journalism, but he went with a strong political agenda, and also an understandable desire to humanize the guy so he could portray him accurately in a film. I doubt he is capable of approaching the man with the same dispassion that a professional journalist would (and I don’t mean the clowns on TV – I mean real investigative journalists.) This is probably why he, and not a real journalist was granted access.
American El Chapos are so much more refined sociopaths. Like El Chapo, they too respond to an unregulated market place, but do not have to slaughter people with their own guns or bodyguards. American El Chapos protect their dangerous but lucrative commercial interests by buying political influence to make sure lawmakers and executive authorities look the other way while pretending to pass “tough” laws that are actually impotent.
Wayne LaPierre is an example who immediately comes to mind. He lobbies Congress for gun show and Internet and straw sale loopholes that allow the Sinaloa cartel to obtain the thousands of guns in Texas and AZ that make their way to Mexico to slaughter tens of thousands innocent men women and children. He wraps himself in the flag and Constitution and gunmakers’s duty to shareholders to maximize profits.Then his political allies like Trump claim it is the Mexican people who are the rapists and criminals. LaPierre and Congress have the blood of tens of thousands a year on their collective hands both here and abroad.
Then there are those who knowingly pollute our drinking water with dangerous chemicals, some Wall Street hedge fund managers and Ponzi scheme profiteers, domestic terrorists who kill in the name of religion, etc. The list goes on and on.
(Edit) Sociopaths are sociopaths whether they come in Mexican peasant garb or wear suits and ties and speak flawless English.