Sean Penn interview led to Guzman’s capture

A clandestine meeting between US actor Sean Penn and Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman in the Mexican jungle helped lead to the drug kingpin’s capture this week, a Mexican official said.

The US rock magazine Rolling Stone posted online on Saturday an interview between Mr Penn and Guzman as well as an October 2 picture showing the Oscar-winning actor shaking hands with the mustachioed Sinaloa drug cartel leader, who is wearing a blue shirt.

Mr Penn writes that the 58-year-old Guzman gave him a “compadre” hug when they met at a Mexican jungle clearing and had a seven-hour sitdown followed by phone and video interviews.

“I supply more heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana than anybody else in the world,” Guzman told Mr Penn in a stunning admission of his criminal enterprise over sips of tequila.

“I have a fleet of submarines, airplanes, trucks and boats,” Guzman said in the meeting, which Mexican actress Kate del Castillo helped to arrange.

Despite Mr Penn’s cloak-and-dagger efforts to keep the gathering secret, a Mexican federal official told AFP that authorities “had knowledge of this meeting” and that it helped lead to Friday’s recapture of the world’s most wanted man in his northwestern home state of Sinaloa.

A federal official said on Sunday that the Mexican authorities want to question Mr Penn and Ms del Castillo over their interview with the druglord. “That is correct, of course, it’s to determine responsibilities,” the official said on condition of anonymity.

Mexican Attorney-General Arely Gomez said on Friday that Guzman had met with unnamed actors and producers in the hope of making a biopic about himself, which helped locate him. She said it was part of a “new line of investigation,” without elaborating.

A second federal official said it was unclear whether Mr Penn and Ms del Castillo had committed a crime. While a reporter could interview a drug cartel suspect, “they’re not journalists,” the official said.

Rolling Stone also published a video showing Guzman without a mustache, talking about why he decided to go into drug trafficking after the age of 15 because there were “no job opportunities.” “Unfor-tunately, where I grew up, there was and there is no other way to survive,” Guzman said.

Asked if he feels responsible for the high level of addictions in the world, he said: “It’s false. The day that I don’t exist, it won’t reduce drug trafficking.”

In a text message exch-ange days after their meeting, Guzman discusses a Marine helicopter raid th-at almost captured him on October 6. He downplayed injuries to his face and leg reported by the authorities, saying: “Not like they said. I only hurt my leg a little bit.” Authorities said the Marines did not shoot Guzman during the raid because he was accompanied by two women and a girl, but that he hurt himself in a fall.

The Rolling Stone interview emerged after Mexi-can prosecutors annou-nced they would seek Guz-man’s extradition to the US, a reversal from President Enrique Pena Nieto’s refusal to send him across the border.

The Attorney-General’s office said it received two US extradition requests in 2015 on a slew of charges, including drug trafficking and murder, and that it later obtained arrest warrants to ship him across the border. “With Guzman Loera’s recapture, the res-pective extradition procee-dings will have to start,” the office said in a statement. It did not indicate when the hearings would start, and noted that Guz-man’s lawyers could appeal.

One of Guzman’s attorneys, Juan Pablo Badillo, vowed to take the case up to the Supreme Court if necessary.