“If that occurs, then there may well be some sort of conflict between the Department of Justice and Penn”, he said.
Advertisement
(AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo). Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman is loaded into a marine helicopter at a federal hangar in Mexico City, Friday, Jan. 8, 2016.
Guzman was recaptured in the northwestern city of Los Mochis on Friday following a bloody shootout between his guards and security forces, six months after he had escaped a maximum security prison through a tunnel from his cell.
It appears that Mexican authorities are taking their recaptured prisoner seriously.
In Penn’s article, published in Rolling Stone on Saturday, Guzman touted his drug trade, saying he “supplies more heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana than anybody else in the world”.
In the interview, Guzman defends his work at the head of the world’s biggest drug trafficking organization, one blamed for thousands of killings.
Penn wrote that 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, involved in the project.
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 43-year-old actress, who starred in the 2011 show “La Reina del Sur” (“The Queen of the South”), had a relatively scandal-free career until she directed tweets at Guzman in February 2012.
Now, some are questioning whether Penn had an obligation to inform the authorities, and whether it was ethical for the magazine to grant Guzman vetting rights. Rolling Stone called it the drug lord’s first interview outside an interrogation. Guzman, the magazine added, didn’t ask for changes. The drug lord agreed to meet them.
Mexican authorities say actor Sean Penn’s contacts with Guzman helped them track the fugitive down – even if he slipped away from an initial raid on the hideout where the Hollywood actor apparently met him. “‘El Chapo’s’ where he should be”. “I have a fleet of submarines, airplanes, trucks and boats”, he told Penn during their encounter.
“That was unexpected. They thought he would be killed before he would be caught”, said Gilberto Cardenas, 51, as he tended his vegetable stand near the center of Badiraguato.
“There’s nothing illegitimate about pursuing an interview with (Guzman)”, Adams said.
Long considered the bible for rock music lovers, Rolling Stone is also known for edgy journalism typified by correspondents like Matt Taibbi, who skewered Wall Street titans during the global financial crisis, and Hunter S. Thompson, originator of the gonzo style of journalism. “I see no spying eyes, but I assume they are there”. “But I don’t think you have an obligation to expose them or uncover them”. “But I would be very hard-pressed to walk out of any interview, with that amount of pressure on me, and be able to recall exactly what was being said”.
Advertisement
Michael Braun, a former chief of operations at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, said Mexico would be wise to send Guzman to the United States.
