MEXICO CITY – Rosa Isela Guzman Ortiz, who says Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” (Shorty) Guzman is her father and was the subject of a story in The Guardian last week, said on Tuesday that the British newspaper “libeled” her and the article told “many lies.”
“I never gave an interview to anybody, I was chatting with certain people and didn’t say anything, they’re libeling me. That’s what they’re doing,” the 39-year-old Guzman Ortiz told Radio Imagen.
The Guardian, citing an interview with Guzman Ortiz, reported that Chapo Guzman was in the United States on two occasions after breaking out of prison in July 2015.
In the exclusive interview published last Friday, Guzman Ortiz is quoted as saying that Mexican officials facilitated the drug lord’s escape and also helped him remain free under an “agreement” before eventually betraying him.
“I don’t want to say anything, I just want to say that they’re libeling me and telling lots of lies,” Guzman Ortiz said.
The woman said her conversation with reporter Jose Luis Montenegro took place between October and November, and she was not sure whether it was recorded.
Montenegro, for his part, told Radio Imagen that he had recordings of both the interview conducted last July “in a face-to-face session” and of calls made via Skype.
Guzman Ortiz’s reaction may be due to “fear” over the impact of her comments, Montenegro said, adding that she was the one who contacted him after the publication of his book “Narcojuniors.”
Montenegro, who revealed that he has received death threats via e-mail, said Guzman Ortiz told him that she “wanted to help her father.”
The majority of the statements published by the newspaper “are false,” Guzman Ortiz said, adding that she said “many things.”
Guzman Ortiz, who lives in the United States, said the interview took place in the northwestern state of Sinaloa and not in the United States.
The woman reiterated that she was the Sinaloa cartel leader’s daughter, adding that she, her husband and children lived “very separate” from the Guzman family.
Guzman Ortiz also denied that she was married to one of the sons of the other top Sinaloa cartel boss, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada.
The woman said she planned to visit her father at the Altiplano prison in central Mexico in the next few weeks.
“He wants to see me,” Guzman Ortiz said.
Guzman Ortiz would be traveling to Mexico at a time when that country’s Attorney General’s Office said it was conducting “different inquiries” to confirm her relationship with the drug lord and was willing to give her an opportunity to present her allegations that politicians were paid off by her father to a judge.
“I’m going to travel there. I have nothing to fear and nothing to hide, I didn’t do anything and I’m not accusing anyone, and all this stuff is a lie,” Guzman Ortiz told Radio Imagen.
In a letter published by the Mexican press last weekend, Emma Coronel, Chapo Guzman’s wife, said the Sinaloa cartel leader did not know Guzman Ortiz.
Coronel told Mexico City’s Milenio newspaper that Guzman was not aware of the existence of his supposed daughter until he was sent to the Altiplano maximum-security prison in the central state of Mexico, which surrounds the Federal District and forms part of the Mexico City metropolitan area.
“(Guzman) told me that this woman started writing him letters saying that her mother had told her that he was her father, it was the first time he had heard of her,” Coronel said.
The drug lord’s wife said he replied “out of courtesy” and did not challenge Guzman Ortiz’s story.
Guzman “has no recollection of who her mother, named Maria Luisa, was” and his sisters have no knowledge of the woman’s existence, Coronel said.
The drug lord escaped from Altiplano I outside Mexico City on July 11, 2015, through a 1.5-kilometer (nearly one-mile) tunnel dug to his cell.
The drug kingpin, who was one of the world’s most-wanted fugitives, was recaptured on Jan. 8 in Sinaloa.
El Chapo has several family members in the United States, the birthplace of his third wife, Emma, a former beauty queen.
Guzman has asked his legal team to speed up the extradition process from Mexico to the United States due to the harsh conditions at Altiplano I, one of the drug lord’s attorneys said Wednesday.
The Sinaloa cartel boss faces drug, money laundering, criminal conspiracy and other charges in Arizona, Texas, California and New York.
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