Drug lord found thanks to Sean Penn interview

The recapture of drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman took a surprise, Hollywood twist when a Mexican official said security forces located the whereabouts of the world’s most-wanted trafficker thanks to a secret interview with US actor Sean Penn.

Penn’s interview with Guzman, who has twice escaped from Mexican maximum security prisons, appeared late Saturday on the website of Rolling Stone magazine. It was purportedly held at a hideout in Mexico in late 2015, several months before Guzman’s recapture last Friday in Los Mochis, Sinaloa, after six months on the run.

In the interview, Guzman defends his work at the head of the world’s biggest drug trafficking organisation. When asked if he is to blame for high addiction rates, he responds: “No, that is false, because the day I don’t exist, it’s not going to decrease in any way at all. Drug trafficking? That’s false.”