El Chapo Guzman: Extraditing drug lord to the US could take a year, Mexico says
Extraditing slippery drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman to the United States could take a year or more, Mexican authorities say.
Key points:
Mexico says it could take at least a year to extradite El Chapo to the United States
US seeking to charge the drug baron for homicide and drug trafficking
Process could take as long as four to six years
El Chapo's lawyers vow 'tough' legal battle
The extradition bid marks a reversal from President Enrique Pena Nieto's refusal to send Guzman across the border prior to his July escape from a maximum-security prison.
After Guzman was recaptured on Friday, authorities launched the extradition process on Sunday, based on two US petitions on a clutch of charges, including drug trafficking and homicide.
"I could say as an estimate that it could be at least a year," Jose Manuel Merino, the international affairs official at the attorney general's office, told Radio Formula.
But Mr Merino warned that the process could last as a long as four to six years depending how hard Guzman's lawyers fight his extradition through injunctions.
Guzman's lawyer, Juan Pablo Badillo, has vowed to launch a "tough" legal battle that could reach the Supreme Court.
Guzman is now back at the Altiplano maximum-security prison, some 90 kilometres west of Mexico City.
The drug lord was previously arrested in February 2014 but it only took him 17 months to escape from the penitentiary after his henchmen dug a 1.5-kilometre tunnel to set him free.
A dozen prison officials have been arrested over the escape.
Officials defended the decision to put him back in the same prison, saying security was beefed up, including with the installation of metal rods under the floor.
Guzman escaped through a hole in his cell's shower floor.
The escape humiliated Mr Pena Nieto, who had vowed to keep him behind bars and put him on trial in Mexico even though the drug lord had already fled from another prison in 2001.
Sean Penn could be questioned over Rolling Stone interview
While Guzman could face US justice, Mexican authorities want to question US actor Sean Penn over his clandestine meeting with the then-fugitive in October.
A Mexican federal official said the Attorney-General's office also wanted to speak with Mexican actress Kate del Castillo, who brokered the meeting.
"That is correct, of course, it's to determine responsibilities," the official said.
White House chief of staff Denis McDonough told CNN that Mr Penn's meeting with Guzman "poses a lot of interesting questions for him and others involved in this so-called interview".
"We'll see what happens," he said.
El Chapo's daring prison break
Find out how notorious drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman gave prison authorities the slip last year.
Rock magazine Rolling Stone published the interview that Guzman gave to the actors in an undisclosed jungle clearing in Mexico.
Despite Penn's cloak-and-dagger efforts to keep the gathering secret, another Mexican official said authorities found out about the meeting, which eventually helped them track down the Sinaloa drug cartel chief.
Guzman was recaptured on Friday in the seaside city of Los Mochis, in his native north-western state of Sinaloa, in a military operation that left five suspects dead.
Some legal experts, however, doubt that Penn could face charges in the United States or Mexico.
"I seriously doubt that charges will be brought against them even though Sean Penn took extraordinary steps to prevent authorities from using his phone to track the whereabouts of Chapo," said Mike Vigil, a former senior official at the US Drug Enforcement Administration.
The meeting sparked criticism in the United States, where Republican Senator Marco Rubio told ABC America television that the interview was "grotesque".
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-01-12/extraditing-el-chapo-could-take-a-year-mexico-says/7082520