Mexican officials on Sunday formally launched the process to extradite re-captured drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman to the United States, starting what could be a lengthy road full of legal appeals and maneuvering.
Agents notified Guzman at the maximum-security Altiplano prison where he is being held after being recaptured on Friday - six months after he escaped through a tunnel out of the same lockup.
Mexico's willingness to extradite Guzman is a sharp turnaround from the last time he was captured in 2014, when then-Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam said the extradition would happen only after he finished his sentence in Mexico in "300 or 400 years."
Mexican authorities say actor Sean Penn's contacts with Guzman helped them track the fugitive down - even if he slipped away from an initial raid on the hideout where the Hollywood actor apparently met him.
