Mexico starts proceedings to extradite ‘El Chapo’ to US

Mexico City, January 11 

Mexico is formally starting extradition proceedings against captured drug lord Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman, the government said late on Sunday, in the strongest sign yet it intends to send him to the United States.

Guzman, the infamous boss of the Sinaloa drug cartel and the world’s most prominent drug trafficker, was arrested in northwestern Mexico on Friday after a months-long manhunt.

On Sunday, Interpol served two extradition warrants, the Mexican attorney general’s office said, kick-starting the latest attempt to have Guzman face US justice for the hundreds of tonnes of cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin he has exported across the border.

Mexico regularly extradites leading traffickers but the government of President Enrique Pena Nieto resisted handing over Guzman after his February 2014 arrest as a point of national pride.

That position changed after he escaped from a maximum security prison in July, for the second time in his career, by slipping away through a mile-long tunnel that surfaced in his cell.

Guzman has been taken back to the same facility over the weekend but, to avoid a repeat of that humiliation, Mexico’s government says it aims to hand Guzman over to US justice as soon as possible. His lawyers are trying to block extradition.

The US government wants Guzman, who is believed to be 58-year-old, tried on charges ranging from money laundering to drug trafficking, kidnapping and murder.

Guzman, who is blamed for thousands of deaths in Mexico and the United States from addiction and gang warfare, is facing open federal indictments in seven US jurisdictions. Chicago and Brooklyn are leading contenders to host what would be one of the most high profile US criminal trials in years, US law enforcement officials said. — Reuters

Mexico wants to question Sean Penn 

• Sean Penn's interview with drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman caused a cross-border uproar, with Mexican authorities seeking to question him while US critics lashed out at the American actor
• A federal official said the attorney general's office wanted to talk with Penn and Mexican actress Kate del Castillo about their secretive meeting with Guzman in October, three months before his capture 
• A second federal official said it was unclear whether Penn and del Castillo, who brokered the meeting, had violated any Mexican law