Big time drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman was finally recaptured in Mexico after having a secret interview with Hollywood A-lister Sean Penn. Guzman had been on the run for more than six months and was finally put in chains by the Mexico police and marines. With his arrest, Guzman will face numerous charges in the United States.
According to a news report from ABC Chicago, Penn's interview with Guzman, who has twice escaped from Mexican maximum security prisons, appeared late Saturday on the website of Rolling Stone magazine. The interview was purportedly held at an undisclosed hideout in northern Mexico in late 2015, several months before Guzman's recapture Friday in Los Mochis, Sinaloa.
Guzman has contacted several film producers and actors for a possible film about his life. His actions led law enforcement on tracking him and eventually capturing him. The meeting between Penn and Guzman was held in the rural part of Durango state named Tamazula.
A Mexican official has released a statement saying that Mexico is willing to extradite Guzman to the United States, according to Chicago Tribune. The official added that Mexico is ready to cooperate with the US. It would be a lengthy wait, however, since the extradition has to go through judicial process.
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.
In a post from Miami Herald, Guzman started as a drug trafficker back in 1995 and together with 22 underlings created a cocaine ring that stretched from Southern California to New Jersey. His infamy grew over the next two decades and he became known as El Chapo, or Shorty. He has been charged more than seven times in different courtrooms in New York, Chicago, Miami and other cities.
Despite several pleas from the US government, Guzman was never extradited. Yet his arrest might change the mind of the Mexican government. In the most recent indictment of Guzmán and Sinaloa Cartel leader Ismael Zambada García, prosecutors listed 163 separate counts of distribution of cocaine in the United States, ranging from 234 kilograms to as much as 23,000 kilos.
No official statement yet as to where Guzman is tried, yet there are speculations that it would be in New York where initial charges were brought.
