Son of Drug Lord 'El Chapo' Has Been Kidnapped

ByAVIANNE TAN ABCNews logo
Wednesday, August 17, 2016

A son of drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman has been kidnapped, a prosecutor from the Jalisco state of Mexico confirmed today.

El Chapo's 29-year-old son, Jesus Alfredo Guzman Salazar, was one of six people abducted from La Leche restaurant in the Mexican beach resort city of Puerto Vallarta on Monday, a prosecutor announced at a news conference today.

Actor Sean Penn said Salazar drove him and Mexican actress Kate del Castillo to their meeting with El Chapo, according to Penn's story for the Rolling Stone.

"It isn't until boarding one of the two planes that I realize that our driver had been the 29-year old son of El Chapo, Alfredo Guzmán," Penn says in the story. "He's handsome, lean and smartly dressed, with a wristwatch that might be of more value than the money housed by the central banks of most nation-states. He's got one hell of a wristwatch."

Earlier today, Jalisco state's attorney general said the abduction was the work of a "criminal group" that operates in the area, according to The Associated Press.

Salazar and his mother, Marian Alejandrina Salazar Hernandez, were sanctioned by the U.S Department of the Treasury in 2012 as key operatives of the Sinaloa Cartel.

Salazar, "along with his father Joaquin 'Chapo' Guzman Loera, was indicted on multiple drug trafficking charges in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in August 2009," the U.S. treasury department wrote in a news release. Salazar's mother, provided "material support to the drug trafficking activities of her husband Guzman Loera and the Sinaloa Cartel."

ABC News' Kirit Radia and Anne Laurent contributed to this report.

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