BOGOTA, Colombia — The tip leading to last week’s capture of fugitive drug lord Joaquin Guzman came from a neighbor reporting suspicious activity at the house where he was hiding in Mexico, a former senior U.S. drug official said Sunday.
While questions have been raised about whether electronic contacts between Guzman and actors Sean Penn and Kate del Castillo could have led police to his hideout, it was a simple tip-off that led to Friday’s arrest, according to Mike Vigil, a high-level Drug Enforcement Administration official in Mexico for 13 years who has been in contact with Mexican authorities conducting the investigation.
Neighbors had noticed the movement of high-caliber, military-style weapons and people they described as suspicious traveling in two armored cars in a lower-middle-class neighborhood in the town of Los Mochis, said Vigil, who was the DEA’s chief of international operations before retiring.
Mexican Attorney General Arely Gomez confirmed Saturday that it was Penn and del Castillo to whom she was referring when she said earlier that Guzman’s communications with “actors and producers” had “formed a new line of investigation” before Guzman’s capture.
She said authorities were able to track the drug lord’s meetings with lawyers and other associates and identify his whereabouts in October — apparently close to the time he met with Penn and del Castillo in a mountainous jungle redoubt.
Mexican armed forces launched a series of raids deep in the Sierra Madre in mid-October, firing into villages, swooping in with helicopters and moving in troops to at least 12 villages in the remote borderlands of Sinaloa and Durango, hoping to the kingpin, widely known as “El Chapo,” who had been on the run since his escape from a maximum-security prison last summer.
Gomez said the raid nearly resulted in Guzman’s arrest, but troops, seeing him accompanied by two women and a child, decided not to engage.
Neither Mexican nor U.S. authorities has discussed further detail of how Guzman was captured, and neither would confirm Vigil’s account, which he said was based on conversations with those closely tied to the investigation.
According to his sources, electronic surveillance of Penn at Guzman’s hideaway, at least after he arrived in Mexico, was not what led Mexican authorities to discover the kingpin’s whereabouts.
“The meeting with Penn in October occurred in the mountainous region of Sinaloa state where there was no cellphone coverage, so they weren’t tracking him there,” Vigil said, citing information from sources in the Mexican government. “But the Mexican marines knew he was up there and put a saturation operation in effect which restricted his room to maneuver and hide.”
The increased presence of Mexican armed forces in the mountainous area that also included parts of Chihuahua and Durango was a result of pressure on Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto to recapture the drug lord.
“Pena Nieto was desperate to regain credibility that he had lost not only because (Guzman) escaped, but the disappearance of the 43 students kidnapped and probably killed in Guerrero state had gone unsolved,” Vigil said.
After the Penn meeting, and after the armed forces commandeered many mountain roads and checkpoints and started conducting searches of houses throughout the region, Guzman’s habit of moving every couple of days became much riskier, Vigil said Mexican officials told him.
Guzman apparently decided then to take the risky step of relocating to Los Mochis, despite the higher risk of being recognized and being reported to the government.
In the end, Vigil said, Guzman was outed by neighbors who reported the movements of his security detail in the otherwise-ordinary neighborhood.
The actual capture occurred after Guzman escaped the house and authorities pursued him along a highway, he said. The fugitive was captured after an eight-minute gunfight that left five of his bodyguards dead.
According to Vigil, Guzman’s partner in the Sinaloa cartel, Ismael Zambada, is capable of running the multibillion-dollar business in the senior drug lord’s absence. Mexican officials discount the possibility that Guzman’s sons could take over.
“All they are good for is spending their dad’s money,” Vigil said, repeating what Mexican officials have told him.