Tag: El Chapo (page 2)

Another court today granted temporary protection to Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman-Loera. The case number is 398/2016 and the Court is the Juzgado Segundo de Distrito de Amparo en Materia Penal.

El Chapo also filed at least two other amparo requests. One is against extradition and the other is to return him to Altiplano.

El Chapo's lawyers say their extradition challenges will take between 1 and 3 years to resolve.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome. (The El Chapo news went down the rabbit hole, I just noticed it wasn't there and replaced it.)

The potential extradition of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman-Loera is making headlines again. A few quick points:

1. The Mexican Judiciary announced today a judge in Mexico's Third District federal criminal court (Mexico City) recently ruled that the U.S. request for El Chapo's extradition to the Southern District of California (San Diego) is legally sufficient, meaning it complied with the treaty requirements. The ruling applies to the Fourth Superseding Indictment in the 1995 Otay Mesa tunnel case. The announcement (in Spanish) is here. [More...]

Kate Del Castillo chose Diane Sawyer and 20/20 for her first TV interview about her trip to Mexico with Sean Penn to meet El Chapo and the movie he entrusted to her to make about his life. (Background here and here.) As a long time fan of Del Castillo's acting, I found it very compelling.

Shorter version: She's sorry, but not for what you might think. She's still planning on making her movie about the life of El Chapo (it won't be a romantic comedy.) She's a little angry at Sean Penn. [More...]

Emma Colonel Aispuro, the 26 year old beauty queen wife of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, gave an extensive interview to journalist Anabel Hernandez. It aired on Telemundo last night.

The purpose of the interview: Emma says she fears for El Chapo's life due to the unbearable conditions under which he is now being held.

The close captioning on Xfinity was pretty bad, but here's what I understood her to say [This is from memory, I didn't take notes during it]: [More...]

Sean Penn's interview with Charlie Rose airs on "60 Minutes" tonight. Here's a recap from Variety.

Penn believes he failed to accomplish his goals, which was to talk about the U.S. government’s was on drugs. “We all want this drug problem to stop. And if you are in the moral right, or on the far left, just as many of your children are doing these drugs, just as many of your brothers and sisters, your mothers and fathers, the teachers at school, are doing these drugs. Just as many,:” he said. “And how much time have they spent in the last week since this article come (SIC) out, talking about that? 1– 1%? I think that’d be generous.”

Even so, Penn said he has no regrets about his actions, and was simply trying to offer readers a look at a hard-to-reach figure in order to illuminate discussion around a heated issue. “I’m really sad about the state of journalism in our country,” he told Rose. “It has been an incredible hypocrisy and an incredible– lesson in just how much they don’t know and how disserved we are.”

I'm busy with other things today and tomorrow, so will just make a short post on El Chapo. I'll also fill in the missing source links in this post tonight.

On El Chapo, I wondered as soon as the Sean Penn connection was revealed whether El Chapo was motivated by a crush on Kate del Castillo. Penn intimated as such in his Rolling Stone article.

... maybe he watched her on TV and developed a crush on her. (Penn seems to intimate infatuation may have been the cause.)

The text messages between El Chapo and Kate published by Milennio also suggest he was infatuated with her. But another piece has now been disclosed in Mexican papers: During the search of the room he occupied at the raided house (the one with the secret switch that opened the way to the tunnel), police found 4 videos of various episodes of La Reina del Sur.

[More...]

Update: Penn was not present during the interview. He met with El Chapo in Mexico, and they agreed to do the interview in the future, but circumstances prevented it. So Penn sent the questions by Blackberry Messenger and El Chapo filmed and sent his replies.

Orignal Post

Rolling Stone has just published a two minute video clip from a recent video interview of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman by Sean Penn at a secret location. RS says the interview was submitted to El Chapo and he had no changes.

The producer of the video is none other than Kate del Castillo, the terrific Mexican actress who starred in La Reina Del Sur and more recently, Duenos del Paraiso(See my post here.) She's also in the new film The 33 about the trapped Chilean miners. She's my favorite Mexican actress, by miles. [More...]

I don't know why the media keeps saying Mexico has refused until now to consider extraditing Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman-Loera to the U.S. It issued two arrest warrants for his extradition, one in July and one in September, 2015. One was for his San Diego case involving the 1993 Otay Mesa tunnel, and the other was for his 2012 Indictment in the Western District of Texas.

Mexico's Attorney General confirmed this today in a statement.

The statement also describes the various time periods relevant to an extradition proceeding. The defense has the right to challenge extradition, and the process likely will take several months or longer. His lawyer says he has six writs of Amparo pending or granted, and plans to file another, as he was denied access to El Chapo this weekend at Altiplano. One of the writs was dismissed on legal grounds.[More...]

At a press conference held at the government's airplane hangar in Mexico City around 10 pm MT last night(available here), both Osorio Chong and Attorney General Arely Gomez spoke. Gomez said El Chapo was being sent back to Altiplano, the prison from which he escaped. (He has since arrived there.)

As for extradition, I don't expect it to happen anytime soon. Last July, he was granted a Writ of Amparo prohibiting his extradition to the U.S. without first being provided a hearing and due process. In October, another court granted his writ. (News article in Spanish here.) [More...]

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto announced on his twitter feed today that Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman-Loera has been arrested.

Details to follow once I've found and translated them.

Update: The NY Times says the arrest followed a shoot-out in Los Mochis. The operation was conducted by the Mexican Navy.

The raid followed a "tip" about persons at a certain residence being armed. Also at the residence: Orso Ivan Gastelum Cruz, a northern Sinaloa leader. It appears he was able to escape. Five others at the home were killed and six were detained.

Mexico's Attorney General this week announced the arrest of six people (and a few more with arrest warrants who are not yet caught) who helped Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman escape from Altiplano prison in July. She didn't name them but their names are available on Mexican news sites. (More here and here.)

Several were arrested in July and August -- in other words, not all are new arrests, just newly disclosed arrests. So who are they? See below: [More...]

The U.S. is still using electronic surveillance to locate Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman. Last week, intercepted cell phone signals or satellite communications (take your pick) led them to believe he was in the "Golden Triangle", the region shared by Chihuahua, Sinaloa and Durango. The U.S. passed the info on to Mexico's Navy, which launched a search operation. It came up empty, finding only some clothes and discarded cell phones and other objects.

The Mexican government today released a statement confirming the unsuccessful search operation. It says El Chapo was injured in fleeing from the site of the raid, but not by direct confrontation. [More...]