Watch the moment drug lord Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman casually escapes from his prison cell

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

The Mexican government has released footage of the moment one of the world's most powerful drug lords escaped his maximum security prison cell.

Grainy footage taken from the prison's security cameras shows Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman pacing his prison cell before crouching down in the cell's shower area and eventually disappearing from sight.

A low partition wall blocks the view of his escape route - a roughly 50cm (20 inch) by 50cm hole that is the entrance to a tunnel dug under the prison.

Mexican National Security Commissioner Monte Alejandro Rubido, said the blind spot was designed to permit Guzman some privacy while he was washing.

Guzman escaped from Altiplano prison on Saturday, apparently down a mile-long tunnel that linked his cell to a partially-finished building on a construction site close to the prison.

The tunnel contained a modified motorcycle on tracks to guide it that Guzman may have used to traverse the tunnel.

Journalists who visited the site reported the track ends two or three steps from the base of a wooden ladder with 17 rungs that he would have scrambled up into a basement, and then another ladder rising into the building.

Experts have said it would have taken more than a year to plan and build the tunnel.

Guzman's escape is the second time the drug lord has managed a successful prison break. In 2001 he escaped in a laundry cart and remained on the run for nearly four years.

(Additional report by agencies)