Penn, in an article published by Rolling Stone magazine on Saturday, said del Castillo had been in contact with Guzman while he was in prison through letters after the kingpin’s attorney approached her.
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“This will be the first interview El Chapo had ever granted outside an interrogation room, leaving me no precedent by which to measure the hazards”.
Prosecutors might also try to say the actors were not working as a journalists because Guzman’s original interest in connecting with Del Castillo was for a movie deal, according to Penn’s account.
Actor Penn has been secretive about the circumstances around the interview, which was conducted while Guzman was being pursued by Mexican and American authorities, and how he managed to secure it in the first place. “The others sometimes are worse criminals, and have numbed us, and hide everything from us”, she wrote, using a now-defunct auxiliary platform for Twitter.
Mexican officials say it could take six to 12 months for Guzman to actually reach the United States.
Just 90 kilometers (55 miles) west of Mexico City, Altiplano was considered the most impenetrable prison in the country until Guzman crawled down a hole in his cell’s shower and escaped through a 1.5-kilometer tunnel on July 11. Originally titled: “Chapo: The escape of the century”, the name was changed Monday to “Capo: The escape of the century”, for what director Axel Uriegas said were production reasons.
Guzman fled the house through a tunnel during a gunfight between troops and his henchmen, but he was caught later after he had stolen a vehicle, capping a months-long manhunt involving 2,500 investigators and federal forces, officials said. A senior intelligence official told the BBC that in a similar way it’s unlikely that Mr Penn will be.
“It was obviously expensive, but they knew they had to flush Chapo Guzman out”, said Michael Vigil, former head of worldwide operations at the Drug Enforcement Administration, who also was briefed on the operation.
But the government had to “send the message that this criminal had to return to the prison he escaped from” to show that it “can hold the most wanted man in the world”, said Gerardo Rodriguez, national security expert at the University of the Americas.
While Penn expressed surprise that a soldier at a checkpoint allowed his vehicle through on the way to the meeting with Guzman in October, one of the officials said that action had proved “very useful” in the hunt, suggesting it was part of the plan. “It’s a remarkable story”.
But, he said, “the overwhelmingly most important factor is which office has the best case against him and the most likelihood of conviction”. “There is nothing we can add anymore”.
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White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough has offered up his thoughts on the secret interview between Sean Penn and El Chapo in light of the drug lord’s capture.
