Mexico offers reward for Guzman

Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman must have had help from authorities to plot his escape, Mexico's Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong said on Monday. Guzman had been behind bars for just 17 months.

"There will be no rest for this criminal," Osorio Chong announced, adding that the government would "not stop" until he was caught. He said that he had decided to fire the Altiplano prison director and the head of the nation's penitentiary system and general coordinator "to facilitate" the investigation.

Officials were offering 60 million pesos ($3.8 million/3.4 million euros) for information leading to Guzman's capture. Mexico's notorious drug smuggler escaped over the weekend through a 1.5 kilometer (1 mile) tunnel that began in the shower area of his prison cell.

US authorities, who are assisting Mexican officials in the case, believe the tunnel must have taken at least a year to build - most of the time Guzman spent at the Altiplano prison until his exit. The tunnel was outfitted with boasted of lights, air vents and a customized motorcycle on a rail line.

The drug lord must have had cooperation from government officials to have had such an escape plan in place, Jim Dinkins, former head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations, told the Associated Press.

Guzman is believed to have at least two and a half decades of experience in digging sophisticated tunnels to deliver contraband under the US-Mexico border. One of his first tunnels was found in 1990 between Douglas, Arizona and Agua Prieta, Mexico. The passage was estimated to have cost around 2 million dollars and featured electric lights and pumps to keep out water.

Mexican authorities have arrested several drug kingpins since President Enrique Pena Nieto took office in 2012. But the government has also garnered plenty of criticism for engaging in a bloody drug war that has left tens of thousands dead.

Pena Nieto was elected on a pledge to bring order to a country struggling with years of gang violence. More than 80,000 people have been killed in drug violence in Mexico since 2006.

mg/cmk (Reuters, AP)