Mexico City: Seven prison officials from the Mexican jail where drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman escaped were charged over the affair and taken to a federal detention center Friday, authorities said.
Prosecutors have held 22 prison officials, including the facility`s director, for questioning since Sunday, but it was unknown whether the director was among those charged.
The seven officials were "driven to a federal detention center" after being charged, a source told AFP.
It took 18 minutes for guards at the Altiplano prison some 90 kilometers (55 miles) west of Mexico City, to go into Guzman`s cell after they noticed that he vanished from it, Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong said Thursday.
Closed-circuit camera footage released by the government this week showed that Guzman paced in his cell before bending down behind a short partition wall in the shower, then disappearing.
The Sinaloa cartel chief then rode on a motorcycle with two carts rigged on a rail system inside a 1.5 kilometer tunnel built for his second escape in 14 years.
The escape has dealt a heavy blow to President Enrique Pena Nieto and the Mexican government, which had pointed to Guzman`s arrest last year as its biggest victory yet in its war on drugs.