The Mexican authorities would not say whether they would investigate Penn and a Mexican actress, Kate del Castillo, who apparently arranged the interview.
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The interview between Guzman and Penn, purportedly held in late 2015 in a hideout in Mexico, appeared late Saturday on the website of Rolling Stone magazine.
Guzman agreed to a filmed interview at a later date, but since a face-to-face meeting proved impossible, the drug lord answered to Penn’s questions via video recordings without the Hollywood star present. “I want to make clear that this interview is for the exclusive use of Miss Kate del Castillo and Mister Sean Penn”, the drug load says.
Penn said he and Guzman discussed various topics, including Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, whom Guzman referred to as “mi amigo”.
“I$3 supply more heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana than anybody else in the world”.
Guzman was recaptured Friday in the city of Los Mochis in his home state of Sinaloa after a shootout that killed five of his associates and wounded one marine.
Guzman was re-captured in a raid by Mexican Marines on Friday, afer his escape from a maximum security prison in Mexico last July.
Notorious Mexican drug lord Joaquin Guzman aka El Chapo 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.
Mexico aims to extradite Guzman to the United States as soon as possible. It is true that consumption, day after day, becomes bigger and bigger.
That echoes comments made by Mexican Attorney General Arely Gomez, who on Friday said that the drug boss’ yearning for the silver screen had helped bring him down.
But ultimately he dismissed Penn as “grotesque”, accusing him of “fawning” over Guzmán in his 10,000-word Rolling Stone article about their jungle rendez-vous.
Gomez said that one of Guzman’s key tunnel builders led officials to the neighborhood in Los Mochis, where authorities had been watching for a month.
“Well, it poses a lot of very interesting questions both for him and for others involved in this-so-called interview, so we’ll see what happens on that – I’m not going to get ahead of it”, he said.
A Mexican federal official defended the decision to send Guzman back to Altiplano, saying measures were taken to improve security, including the installation of metal rods under the floor of prison cells.
“He shouldn’t be extradited because Mexico has a fair Constitution”, he said.
He responds: “No, I think that if they find me they will arrest me”. However the timing might depend on injunctions filed by Guzman’s legal team.
Guzman, who has escaped prison twice, himself said he didn’t believe his business had been impacted by his last spell in prison.
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Following the October rendezvous, Penn continued to have correspondence with El Chapo – who famously had his cartel tunnel him out of Mexico’s most secure prison – via instant messenger BBM.
