Mexico: Sean Penn interview helped locate drug lord

MEXICO CITY -- Mexican officials said Sean Penn's contacts with drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman helped them track the fugitive -- even if he slipped away from an initial raid on the hideout where the Hollywood actor apparently met him.

Penn's article on Guzman was published late Saturday by Rolling Stone magazine, a day after Mexican marines captured the world's most wanted kingpin in a raid on the city of Los Mochis near the Gulf of California.

Penn wrote of elaborate security precautions, but also said as he flew to Mexico on Oct. 2 for the meeting, "I see no spying eyes, but I assume they are there."

Apparently he was right.

A Mexican federal law-enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not permitted to comment on the issue, said the Penn interview led authorities to Guzman in the area of Tamazula, a rural part of Durango state.

Sean Penn

They raided Guzman's remote hideout a few days after the interview and just missed capturing Guzman, whose July escape from Mexico's top security prison -- through a mile-long tunnel -- had embarrassed President Enrique Pena Nieto and made his capture a national priority.

Describing the capture, Attorney General Arely Gomez said investigators had been aided in locating Guzman by documented contacts between his attorneys and "actors and producers" she said were interested in making a film about him, although she did not name them.

Two months after that close call, marines caught him in a residential neighborhood of Los Mochis, where they had been monitoring a suspected safe house. Five people died in a gunbattle as troops moved in.

In the interview, Guzman defends his work as head of the world's biggest drug-trafficking organization, one blamed for thousands of killings. When asked whether 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."

Penn wrote Guzman was interested in having a movie filmed on his life and wanted Mexican actress Kate del Castillo, who had portrayed a drug trafficker in a television series, 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 representatives for either Penn or del Castillo 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 move authorities had ruled out before his July escape.

"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 it could take at least six months to approve extradition through courts, where Guzman's attorneys can battle a move to the U.S., where he faces drug trafficking charges in several states.

"That can take weeks or months, and that delays the extradition," he said. "We've had cases that take six years."

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."

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.