In this January 8, 2016 image released by Mexico’s federal government, Mexico’s most wanted drug lord, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, stands for his prison mug shot with the inmate number 3870 at the Altiplano maximum security federal prison in Almoloya, Mexico.
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Immensely rich from flooding the United States with cocaine, Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin “Chapo” Guzman could afford the fastest cars on earth – but in an ironic twist of fate, the one he hijacked as he tried to avoid recapture was a clunker.
Guzman, head of the Sinaloa drug cartel, had been on the run since July, when he tunnelled out of a maximum security prison in Mexico.
On the other hand, it is still unknown whether Penn and Del Castillo will be charged because they had information about El Chapo’s location, yet chose to withhold it from proper authorities.
While Guzman could face United States justice, Mexican authorities are investigating the clandestine meeting between Penn and Mexican actress Kate del Castillo, who brokered the interview.
The drug kingpin was seen wearing two of Barabas Men’s club shirts in the photos accompanying the interview by Sean Penn in Rollingstone Magazine. The hatch door at the end opens into the city’s storm sewer system.
Mexico has received guarantees from a court in Texas that if it receives Guzman as part of his extradition, it will not seek the death penalty against him, the Attorney General Office’s head of International Proceedings, Jose Manuel Merino, said in a newspaper interview on Tuesday.
“I think it’s safe to assume that they understand that the world is watching how this case moves forward and that this individual needs to stay behind bars”, said US State Department spokesman John Kirby.
Even so, it took six months to catch him, with Mexican news media carrying repeated reports of marine raids into the mountains of Guzman’s native Sinaloa state.
Guzman’s recapture followed the most intensive manhunt in modern Mexican history, with at least 2,500 security and intelligence agents dedicated to getting him.
The official said that authorities were following Penn and Del Castillo’s movements all the time after they arrived in Mexico to meet with Guzman.
Check out the photographs of Penn and del Castillo’s journey above.
During the operation, code named Tlatelolco as it was supposed to occur on the October 2 anniversary of a famous 1968 Mexico City massacre, one of the marines had Guzman in his sites, but chose not to pull the trigger as Chapo had a young girl in his arms, Loret de Mola said.
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The Mexican marines who led the arrest found the passage about 90 minutes later, and tracked the whereabouts of El Chapo from there. Below was a submarine-like metal hatch connecting the partially flooded tunnel to the Los Mochis drains. His escape has changed their minds.Guzman obviously had help on the inside when he escaped last summer, shocking the nation and humiliating the government.
