Penn says ‘nothin’ to hide’ over Guzman meeting

Mexico is pressing the USA government, which has requested Guzman’s extradition, to find out more about Penn’s dealings with the infamous head of the Sinaloa drug cartel, according to one U.S. government source who requested anonymity because he was not authorised to speak publicly about the case.

Do you think a magazine has an obligation to turn in wanted criminals or is this an exercise in freedom of the press?

Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman is escorted by soldiers during a presentation at the hangar belonging to the office of the Attorney General in Mexico City, January 8, 2016. He said what he wanted through money and violence, not the media.

It turns out that authorities were watching.

Mexican officials have said that contacts between Guzman’s lawyers and Penn and actress Kate del Castillo helped them track down the fugitive and they raided his hideout in rural Durango state a few days after their October 2 meeting.

Penn wrote in the Rolling Stone article of elaborate security precautions, including switching phones.

In one tweet, written while Guzman was on the lam a decade after his first prison break, del Castillo said she “believes more in Chapo Guzman than the governments that hide the truth from me even though it might be painful”.

The Mexican newspaper El Universal published 10 images Monday that appeared to show Penn being monitored as he arrived in Mexico.

Mr Mike Vigil, former DEA chief of worldwide operations who has been briefed on the Guzman investigation by USA and Mexican law enforcement, said there is a “very strong possibility that Penn and Del Castillo are going to have to testify”.

Penn’s interview with Guzman was published the day after the drug lord was recaptured.

No announcement has yet been made, and a Justice Department official said Monday that no decision had been reached on where Guzman would be sent once Mexico actually extradites him.

Mexican authorities say they’ve formally notified Guzman, whose capture Friday came six months after he broke out of a Mexican prison, that arrest warrants from the US are being processed. The actor has become known in the region for befriending leftist leaders, including late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales in Bolivia.

Previously arrested in February 2014, it took Guzman just 17 months to escape from the Altiplano penitentiary after his henchmen dug a 1.5-kilometer (one-mile) tunnel that led to a hole in his cell shower’s floor. He has also been widely hailed for the charity he founded in Haiti after its devastating 2010 quake. When will he escape again?

On Monday, the prison was ringed by soldiers, some riding in armored personnel carrier, as well as marines and federal police.

The question is, will it be in a courtroom in Mexico, or in the US?

But Penn’s interview with El Chapo and his article in Rolling Stone have annoyed journalists who normally cover Mexico and the drug war.

Meanwhile, prosecutors in the Western District of Texas accuse Guzman and a series of associates of bringing cocaine and marijuana into the state through vast open desert, across bridges and via other trafficking routes, and then arranging for the proceeds to be smuggled back into Mexico.