Story highlights Mexico's attorney general announces first arrests in connection with "El Chapo" escape

Drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman escaped from Mexican prison on July 11

Investigators are trying to determine if guards' response time contributed to escape

(CNN) Seven people who worked in the maximum-security prison that held Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman have been charged in connection with his escape, Mexico's attorney general said Friday in a statement.

The prison workers will be jailed in the state of Guanajuato and the investigation continues, the statement said.

On Thursday, Mexico's interior minister said that on the night Guzman escaped, it took 18 minutes for guards to arrive at his cell after they lost sight of him on surveillance video.

Investigators are trying to determine whether the guards' response time contributed to his July 11 escape from the facility west of Mexico City.

"That is part of what the attorney general's office is looking at -- if the protocols were fulfilled in the correct times," Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong said at a news conference.

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