Meeting Sean Penn for an interview led to Mexican drug lord’s recapture

However, Penn had met El Chapo months before he was found – for a seven-hour interview – and had followed up via burner phones.

Penn, who pursued the interview after proposing the idea to Rolling Stone magazine, brokered his own meeting with the drug king through Mexican celebrity actress Kate del Castillo, of whom El Chapo is a big fan.

Penn was set up with El Chapo through a Mexican TV actress, Kate Del Castillo, who has been a vocal supporter for El Chapo.

A Mexican federal law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not permitted to comment on the issue, told the Associated Press it was the Penn interview that led authorities to Guzman in a rural part of Durango state in October.

Mexico’s attorney general says Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman wanted to make a biopic, and his lawyers’ conversations with actors and producers helped lead authorities to his capture.

The government used the contacts between his people and those in the film industry to open a new line of investigation, according to Arely Gomez Gonzalez, Mexico’s attorney general, who gave a lengthy statement on the arrest late Friday night.

In the interview with Penn, Guzman said that he does not believe that he can be held responsible for the high level of drug addiction in the world.

“The day I don’t exist, it won’t decrease in any way at all”, he said.

His escape prompted an worldwide manhunt, which ended this week when he was recaptured on Friday.

Authorities said the marines did not shoot Guzman during the raid because he was accompanied by two women and a girl, but that he hurt himself by falling.

Guzman was seized on Friday after a shootout between his gunmen and Mexican marines at his home in Los Mochis where he had been hiding.

Mexican authorities are now looking to extradite the notorious drug lord – who escaped twice from the same Mexican jail – to the US.

Penn said Guzman was entirely unapologetic and when asked: “Of all the countries and cultures with whom you do business, which is the most hard?”

“El Chapo has said in the past that his worst fear is being extradited to the United States”, said Andrew Selee, an expert on Mexico at the Wilson Center in Washington. They stormed a white house, and found some of El Chapo’s men plus a stash of weapons, including a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.

In another unusual step, Rolling Stone allowed for Guzman’s approval of the piece for publication. “I have a fleet of submarines, airplanes, trucks and boats”, he says.

Guzman’s arrest came after he embarrassed the government of President Enrique Pena Nieto by escaping for Mexico’s most-secure prison. Five suspected Sinoloa Cartel members were killed and one Mexican marine was wounded during the capture operation.

Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman (centre) is escorted by soldiers during a presentation at the Navy’s airstrip in Mexico City February 22, 2014.

Mexican government sources told ABC News on Saturday that Penn and del Castillo are under investigation in connection to the interview with Guzman.