ACTOR PENN’S MEETING LEADS TO “EL CHAPO”
Meeting with Sean Penn likely led to capture.
Mexico is willing to cooperate with the U.S. in the extradition of the most-wanted drug trafficker, whose whereabouts were uncovered after he met with the American actor.
Mexico is willing to extradite drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman to the United States, a federal law enforcement official said Saturday, 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 official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. But he cautioned that there could be a lengthy wait before U.S. prosecutors can get their hands on Guzman, the most-wanted trafficker who was recaptured Friday after six months on the run: “You have to go through the judicial process, and the defense has its elements too.”
Top officials in the party of President Enrique Peña 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.
At least one drug cartel leader has eventually ended up in Colorado, at the Administrative Maximum Security Penitentiary — known as Supermax or ADX — in Florence. Jeff Dorschner, spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Denver, said where Guzman ends up depends on where he was being prosecuted and what happens after prosecution.
“When the extradition process is complete, ‘El Chapo’ will be brought to the district in which he is being prosecuted,” Dorschner said. “So whoever filed an indictment charging him with drug trafficking, they would take him.”
Meanwhile, Mexican officials gave more details on the drug lord’s capture.
From the minute Guzman popped out of his tunnel and was whisked to a pair of waiting Cessnas, authorities say, they chipped away at the vast network of accomplices that helped the billionaire drug lord escape. Those accomplices, plus Guzman’s apparent vanity — he had contacted producers and actresses about starring in a biopic based on his life — helped authorities ultimately recapture the chief of the Sinaloa drug cartel in a roadside motel.
A Mexican law enforcement official says Guzman’s secret interview with actor Sean Penn helped authorities locate his whereabouts.
Penn secretly met with Guzman in his Mexican hideout in October, according to an account Penn wrote for Rolling Stone magazine that was published online Saturday night.
According to the article, Penn asked Guzman how being free had affected him.
“Well, as for being free — happy, because freedom is really nice, and pressure, well, for me it’s normal, because I’ve had to be careful for a few years now in certain cities, and, no, I don’t feel anything that hurts my health or my mind. I feel good,” Guzman told Penn.
Mexican Attorney General Arely Gomez Gonzalez said Friday that after weeks of investigation and military and police operations in the region, authorities had an understanding of Guzman’s properties and vehicles, including planes. In October, they tracked him to a ranch in Pueblo Nuevo in the western state of Durango. But as Guzman fled — he would fall and injure his face and leg — he was accompanied by two women and a young girl, and soldiers in a helicopter didn’t want to fire and kill the others, Gomez said.
By late December, authorities suspected that Guzman had gone to the coast. They began to focus on a white concrete house in an upscale neighborhood of Los Mochis, a city in northern Sinaloa, where they suspected he was hiding.
By Friday morning, commandos from an elite Mexican Marine unit raided his house, setting off a gun battle that left five people dead. Guzman and one of his top lieutenants, Ivan Gastelum, used one of their signature moves, fleeing through the sewer system, something Guzman has used before to escape.
They popped up through a manhole cover and stole a car but were ultimately pursued to a motel about 5 miles north, where Guzman was captured unharmed.
Gomez said Guzman would return to Altiplano, the same prison where he escaped six months ago.