Guzman, 58, escaped from a Mexican maximum security prison through a tunnel in July, eluding his pursuers until his capture in the seaside town of Los Mochis after a raid that left five people dead.
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Sean Penn’s meeting with Joaquin Guzman was arranged through Mexican actress Kate del Castillo, known for her television portrayal of a female drug lord in the soap opera La Reina del Sur.
Penn met Guzman in person in October, a sit-down meeting that started with a warm hug and lasted seven hours.
The engineers had to learn how to dig safely next to “the low-lying water table” beneath the prison facility.
There have also been claims Guzman was planning to make a biopic of his infamous life and had contacted actresses and producers for the film.
“There are plans to cooperate with the US”, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to comment.
In the Rolling Stone’s interview, when Penn asks Guzman about whether he is responsible for the high level of drug addiction in the world, he responds: “No, that is false, because the day I don’t exist, it’s not going to decrease in any way at all”.
“I supply more heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana than anybody else in the world”, Guzman told Penn in a stunning admission of his criminal enterprise over sips of tequila.
Notorious Mexican drug lord Joaquin “Chapo” Guzman feels neither remorse nor responsibility for smuggling billions of dollars’ worth of drugs into the United States, and does not consider himself a violent man despite countless murders blamed on him.
US President Barack Obama’s administration congratulated Mexico following the arrest but did not publicly indicate whether it would press Pena Nieto to extradite Guzman.
El Chapo was captured Friday, and Penn’s interview was published Saturday evening.
Another Mexican government source said authorities were considering whether to investigate Penn and Del Castillo, possibly for money laundering.
He was recaptured on Friday in the north-western city of Los Mochis in his home state of Sinaloa, which he had come to dominate through his drugs cartel.
“Since Guzman Loera has been recaptured, the beginning of the extradition proceedings should begin”, the Mexican attorney general’s office said in statement.
Penn called it “the first interview El Chapo had ever granted outside an interrogation room”.
The Attorney General’s Office of Mexico said that the United States had filed two extradition requests with Mexico’s Foreign Affairs Ministry on June 16 and August 31, respectively, and that those petitions “were determined by the ministry to meet the requisites of the bilateral extradition treaty”.
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 USA, where he faces drug trafficking charges in several states. After his conviction, he escaped from a maximum security prison in 2001, using a laundry cart, and evaded Mexican authorities for years.
After 13 years on the run he was arrested again in 2014. They closed in on the two men based on reports of stolen vehicles and they were arrested on the highway.
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On July 11, after just 17 months at Altiplano, Guzman slipped through a hole in his cell’s shower, climbed on a motorcycle mounted on rails, and traveled 1.5 kilometers through a tunnel to freedom. But Malcolm Beith, author of “The Last Narco: Inside the Hunt for El Chapo, the World’s Most Wanted Drug Lord”, says that doesn’t sound like the Guzman he studied to write his 2010 book.
