Movie star Kate del Castillo, who interviewed notorious drug kingpin El Chapo with Hollywood legend Sean Penn, has been declared a victim of persecution by a Mexican judge.
Del Castillo was also granted a three-month protection period to pursue her case against Mexican security services and government officials who allegedly spied on her.
The ruling came after an eight-year legal battle over her role in the meeting between Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman and Penn in 2015.
Del Castillo brokered the meet while El Chapo was on the run, not knowing that she was being shadowed by CISEN, Mexico’s national security service.
Penn’s interview was written up in Rolling Stone magazine in January 2016 and sparked the Netflix documentary ‘The Day I Met El Chapo’ two years later.
Del Castillo sued the Mexican government in 2017 claiming their police and security services had violated her rights.
In December last year, she petitioned Mexican authorities to recognise her as a victim of persecution.
Now – according to local media – judges have granted her request, declaring her on 22nd February a victim of persecution by former President Enrique Pena Nieto.
Del Castillo – who was a huge star in her native Mexico before leaving for Hollywood – says the investigations caused her huge financial and personal damage.
The lack of legal protection, she argued, made it impossible to fight the officials who had targeted her.
The 50-year-old star says she had to leave her homeland and could not return to film a second series of her bit TV series ‘La Reina del Sur’.
Now Third District Judge of Amparo in Criminal Matters Augusto Octavio Mejia Ojeda has declared her a protected person.
The judge ordered a period of 90 days for the Federal Public Ministry to establish whether former public servants should face legal proceedings.
Del Castillo has also slammed Penn, saying that the actor “betrayed” her and used her “as bait” to get his Rolling Stone interview.
She reportedly said: “He betrayed me and it will be him who has to sleep peacefully, because I do not give a damn about that person.
“He tricked me, he got into my bed, that is, there were a lot of things that you can say ‘How deplorable!’ about. In other words, a deplorable person.”
She also said that she is afraid to return to Mexico but added that she will not be prevented from doing so because it will always be her home.
Del Castillo reportedly said: “I’m not going to lie to you. Every time I go back, I get nervous, because they were very traumatic moments for me.
“But every time I go back to Mexico, that’s my home, it’s my country, it’s where I’m from, and I don’t plan to stop going to Mexico and working on projects.”
