El Chapo Guzman being arrested – Sean Penn may have inadvertently helped
By Lizbeth Diaz and Simon Gardner
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – An interview that Hollywood star Sean Penn conducted with Mexican Joaquin “Chapo” Guzman late last year helped Mexico’s government catch the world’s most wanted drug lord, sources said on Saturday.
Guzman told Penn in the interview published in Rolling Stone on Saturday that he sent tunnel engineers to Germany for training prior to his prison break through a mile-long passage to his cell last year.
Guzman, the legendary boss of the Sinaloa drug cartel, was arrested in northwest Mexico on Friday morning, and sent back to the jail he broke out of in July through a mile-long tunnel that led straight into his cell.
Mexico now aims to extradite him to the United States as soon as possible after recapturing him following a bloody shootout and frantic search in which the wily kingpin almost gave pursuers the slip again.
The interview, which is the latest twist in Chapo’s larger-than-life career, and also features video clips of the drug lord in a colorful shirt and black cap in a rural setting, gives rare insight into the life of an almost mythical figure.
Penn calls it “the first interview El Chapo had ever granted outside an interrogation room.”
Mexico’s government was aware the interview was being conducted, and was closely monitoring all movements, a government source said.
In the interview, brokered by Mexican actress Kate Del Castillo, who herself played a Mexican drug queen in a well-known soap, Penn says Guzman sent engineers to Germany for three months of training on how to avoid problems when excavating near “the low-lying water table” beneath the prison.
(With additional reporting by Jesus Bustamente in Los Mochis, Michael O’Boyle in Culiacan, Alexandra Alper and Ana Isabel Martinez in Mexico City and Mark Hosenball in Washington; Writing by Simon Gardner; Editing by Kieran Murray, Mary Milliken and Alistair Bell)