Mexico mounted huge manhunt for ‘El Chapo’

Associated Press

MEXICO CITY

The capture of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman followed the most-intensive manhunt in modern Mexican history, with at least 2,500 security and intelligence agents dedicated to getting a man whose escape had personally embarrassed the nation’s president.

The government says the hunt involved piecing together information from intelligence, data, interrogations and raids – as well as monitoring actors Sean Penn and Kate del Castillo as they came to interview the world’s most-wanted trafficker.

While Mexican authorities had spent decades chasing Guzman, the chase after his July escape from a top-security prison was different for two reasons, said a former government intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the case.

“One, El Chapo stopped being clandestine. He left the mountain. He met with people, as we now know. That made it easier for intelligence units to find him,” said the ex-official, who maintains sources inside security operations. “The other factor: there were, from the time of the escape, 2,500 people from various security agencies exclusively dedicated ... to mount a successful operation.”