(Kiko Guerrero via AP/EL DEBATE).
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Del Castillo had accompanied Hollywood star Sean Penn to a secret meeting with Guzman at an undisclosed location in Mexico late previous year, which the government says unwittingly helped lead to his capture.
“We’ll let somebody else sort out what Sean Penn did and didn’t do”, he said.
In the interview in Rolling Stone, Guzman defends his work at the head of the world’s biggest drug trafficking organization, one blamed for thousands of killings.
In the U.S., she has appeared in films including last year’s thriller No Good Deed and the TV shows Weeds and Jane the Virgin.
Before he was caught, Guzman spent hours below ground as his henchmen sought to lure pursuing Marines up toward the roof of the house he had been holed up in, in Los Mochis in his native state of Sinaloa.
Brooklyn prosecutors aren’t the only ones looking to get their hands on Guzman – as leader of the Mexican Sinaloa Cartel, which has smuggled billions of dollars worth of cocaine and other illicit drugs over American borders, he has earned indictments from cities across the United States, including Chicago and Miami. As he flew to Mexico for the meeting, he wrote, “I see no spying eyes, but I assume they are there”.
They were apparently already following del Castillo based on contacts with Guzman lawyers.
The Mexican newspaper El Universal published 10 images Monday that appeared to show Penn being monitored as he arrived in Mexico.
The newspaper said the photos were part of a Mexican government intelligence file.
“I’ve got nothin’ to hide”, he wrote.
Penn did not respond directly to questions on whether it was appropriate for him to submit his story to Guzman for approval in advance of publication, or whether he took adequate information and operational security measures to protect his source. He has also been widely hailed for the charity he founded in Haiti after its devastating 2010 quake. The world’s most wanted drug lord was recaptured by Mexican marines Friday, six months…
Officials had previously estimated a six-month minimum, but Jose Manuel Merino told local media that the extradition would probably take “one year or longer”.
He said legal challenges had made the extradition process last as long as six years in one case. In a statement, the Attorney General’s Office said Mexican agents assigned to the global police agency Interpol served two arrest warrants to the drug lord, who is being held at the Altiplano prison following his capture by Mexican marines on Friday.
The US has filed a request for Guzman to be extradited to face charges of smuggling vast amounts of drugs into the country.
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He argued his client shouldn’t be extradited to the USA because “our country must respect national sovereignty, the sovereignty of its institutions to impart justice”. “Drug trafficking? That’s false”.
