Mexico begins extradition proceedings against drug lord

MEXICO CITY – Mexico began the process of extraditing drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman to the United States, two days after the famed fugitive was recaptured following a dramatic, monthslong hunt featuring movies stars, sewer escapes and bloody shootouts.

Officials warned that the process could take a long time as Guzman’s lawyers file legal appeals and maneuver to keep their client in Mexico, where he has already escaped from maximum security prisons twice.

On Sunday, agents formally notified Guzman that he was wanted in the United States. In a statement, the attorney general’s office said Mexican agents assigned to the international police agency Interpol served two arrest warrants to the drug lord, who is being held at the Altiplano prison following his capture Friday.

Guzman’s defense now has three days to present arguments against extradition and 20 days to present supporting evidence, beyond the plethora of other appeals they have already started filing.

Guzman’s powerful Sinaloa cartel smuggles multi-ton shipments of cocaine and marijuana as well as manufacturing and transporting methamphetamines and heroin, mostly to the U.S. He is wanted in various U.S. states.

Guzman’s attorney Juan Pablo Badillo has said the defense has already filed six motions to challenge extradition requests.

Badillo said his client shouldn’t be extradited to the U.S. because “our country must respect national sovereignty, the sovereignty of its institutions to impart justice.”

On Saturday, a Mexican federal law enforcement official said the quickest Guzman could be extradited would be six months, but even that is not likely because of the many appeals filed by his lawyers. He said the appeals are usually turned down, but each one means a judge has to schedule a hearing.

Mexico’s willingness to extradite Guzman is a sharp turnaround from the last time he was captured in 2014, when then-Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam said the extradition would happen only after he finished his sentence in Mexico in “300 or 400 years.”

Guzman was re-apprehended on Friday after a shootout between gunmen and Mexican marines at the home in Los Mochis, a seaside city in Guzman’s home state of Sinaloa. Five suspects were killed and six others arrested. One marine was injured.

Mexican authorities say actor Sean Penn’s contacts with 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.

Penn’s article on Guzman was published late Saturday by Rolling Stone magazine, a day after the drug lord’s recapture. In it, Penn wrote of elaborate security precautions, but also said that as he flew to Mexico on Oct 2 for the meeting, “I see no spying eyes, but I assume they are there.” He was apparently right.

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 the Penn interview led authorities to Guzman in the area of Tamazula, a rural part of Durango state.

They raided Guzman’s remote hideout a few days after the interview and narrowly missed capturing Guzman.

Describing the capture, Attorney General Arely Gomez said investigators had been aided in locating Guzman by documented contacts between his attorneys and “actors and producers” she said were interested in making a film about him, though she did not name them. Two months after that close call, marines finally caught him in a residential neighborhood of Los Mochis, where they’d been monitoring a suspected safe house.