Sean Penn ‘nothing to hide’ over drug lord interview

Mexican officials have said it could take at least a year to extradite El Chapo to the US.

Guzman, whose nickname El Chapo means shorty in Spanish, was arrested on Friday in a raid in his home state of Sinaloa, six months after he was sprung from a maximum security prison.

A video released by the government shows the marines firing their assault rifles and tossing smoke grenades before entering the rooms.

Penn dismissed criticism of his visit to Guzman.

They raided Guzman’s remote hideout a few days after the interview and narrowly missed capturing Guzman, whose July escape from Mexico’s top security prison – though a mile-long (1.5-kilometer) tunnel – had embarrassed President Enrique Pena Nieto and made his capture a national priority.

“When you saw that picture of them shaking hands, and you read that he spent seven hours interviewing him, what did you make of that?” But his lawyers will strenuously fight his transfer, and the legal process could take up to a year, officials said.

There was no immediate response from representatives for either Penn or del Castillo to the Mexican official’s comments.

The kitchen at a safe house in Los Mochis in Sinaloa state, Mexico, where five people were shot dead during the hunt for El Chapo.

Late Tuesday, a Mexican federal official said the government is moving Guzman constantly from cell to cell.

Guzman has been returned to the prison since his recapture, and Mexican authorities insist he will not escape again. “I’ve got nothin’ to hide”, Penn told reporters on Monday.

The bright blue and gray collared shirt with stripes and designs can be seen in the photo posted in a controversial Rolling Stone article by Penn in which the Hollywood actor and director describes a meeting with the drug lord in the Mexican jungle.

With the advance publicity that Mr Penn has helped to generate, the film should have no trouble finding backers.

On one upstairs bed the marines found four DVDs from the series La Reina del Sur, starring Kate del Castillo, the Mexican actress who put Guzman in contact with the American actor Sean Penn.

David Schultz, an attorney who defends journalists and news organizations at Levine, Sullivan, Koch & Schulz in NY, said the split in the courts raises more questions than answers.

Federal prosecutors in six states have filed indictments against Guzman, but the Eastern District of NY and the Southern District of Florida have overlapping cases that could be combined, and the headquarter sites of Brooklyn and Miami have emerged as the leading contenders for the sensational trial. All were captured, “Primero Noticias” said.

“Since he arrived, he has been in eight different cells”, Sanchez said of Guzman’s time in prison.

“It was obviously expensive, but they knew they had to flush Chapo Guzman out”, said Michael Vigil, former head of global operations at the Drug Enforcement Administration, who also was briefed on the operation.