Rolling Stone faces criticism over ‘El Chapo’ interview

Mexican officials say Sean Penn’s contacts with drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” 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.

He escaped from a high-security prison in Jalisco state in 2001, was recaptured in February 2014, and escaped from the Altiplano prison outside Mexico City in July.

Mexico’s weak justice system will again be put to the test as the extradition process pledged by the government gets under way, according to Mike Vigil, a retired head of worldwide operations for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Surrounded by over 100 cartel troops, Guzman sat down to dinner with Mr Penn and Ms Del Castillo, who once played a drug kingpin herself in a soap opera, according to Rolling Stone.

Their comments chime with public pronouncements by Attorney General Arely Gomez, who said on Friday that an important aspect of his recapture “was discovering Guzman’s intention to have a biographic film made”. For example, Penn writes how, at his first meeting with Guzman, “we eat, drink and talk for hours”, but later says he feels “naked without pen and paper”.

Since 2012, during Enrique Pena Nieto’s term, Mexico has seen more than 57,000 murders but likely the government has shifted the stats down, Carmen Aristegui reported.

Still, one senior official in the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) said intelligence services got wind of Guzman because they were tracking Gastelum. Mexican forces used helicopter gunships to attack Guzman’s ranch during a siege that lasted days.

The cartel boss narrowly escaped, with what he told Del Castillo was a minor leg injury, but the raid in the northern state of Durango was a major breakthrough in the manhunt.

As the world digests the weird tale of Sean Penn and his mountaintop meeting with the recently recaptured drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, many are left wondering what comes next for the Hollywood actor and the woman who made it possible.

“He was interested in seeing the story of his life told on film, but would entrust its telling only to Kate”, wrote Penn, who appears in a photo posted with the interview shaking hands with Guzman whose face is uncovered.

“Good moment to remember what happens to real journalists who cover Mexican drug traffickers”, Baron said. “I have a fleet of submarines, airplanes, trucks and boats”. In a Q&A, Penn asks Guzman whether he considers himself a violent person, to which he replies: “No, sir”.

“No, sir…. Look, all I do is defend myself, nothing more”. “But do I start trouble?”

She also found descriptions of Guzman as “humble” deeply disturbing.

“At an American taxpayer cost of $25 billion per year, this war’s policies have significantly served to kill our children, drain our economies, overwhelm our cops and courts, pick our pockets, crowd our prisons and punch the clock”, he said.

In an interview with Televisa that same year, the daughter of famous telenova actor Eric del Castillo said she had been misunderstood, insisting that her messages were “totally ironic, sarcasm”.

After traveling to the unknown location in SUVs, Penn said they were surrounded by “30 to 35” armed guards, with an additional hundred soldiers in a nearby field.

Mr Penn unsuccessfully tried to set up a formal follow-up interview. Another Mexican government source said authorities were considering whether to investigate Penn and Del Castillo, possibly for money laundering.

Using a gonzo-style approach, Penn details his secret trip to the Mexican jungle that originated with a secret meeting in NY and, ends, oddly, with the actor passing gas in front of El Chapo.