Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto announced Friday that his administration is working to extradite notorious drug cartel leader Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán to face trial in the United States "as soon as possible."

While speaking at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, Nieto said officials are working quickly to send the infamous Mexican drug lord to the U.S.

"Evidently, there's a whole process we have to go through that involves the judicial branch of our country, but the directive that the Attorney General's Office has been given is to work and speed up this work to make this extradition of this highly dangerous criminal happen as soon as possible," said Peña Nieto, according to CNN.

Peña Nieto also described Guzmán's escape from a maximum security prison in Mexico last summer as "a difficult and tense moment."

"But the important thing is that we were able to re-apprehend him," he said at the annual gathering of world leaders and intellectuals. "The most wanted criminal in Mexico, one of the most wanted in the world, was re-apprehended thanks to an intelligence effort and consistent work of the public security forces in our country," the President added.

Guzmán's legal reps, however, vowed to fight the extradition by filing injunctions in Mexican courts at the federal and circuit levels, which could delay the process by up to a year.

El Chapo spent over a year behind bars before he escaped from the Altiplano maximum-security prison in Mexico in July 2015, marking his second successful prison break. He then spent six months on the lam until he was found and arrested at his secret home in the Mexican city of Los Mochis on Jan. 8.

Officials were able to find Guzmán by tracking his communications with Hollywood producers and actors, including Sean Penn, who had interviewed the drug lord for Rolling Stone. The kingpin was also working with filmmakers to produce his own biopic, reported The Associated Press.

Related