Joaquin Guzmán's arrest suggested to be in response to release of Rafael Caro Quintero, jailed for killing of DEA agent

After Osama Bin Laden was captured in 2011, speculation flowered in Mexico that Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzmán – the world's most wanted drug trafficker – could be the next target for a similar special US-led operation.

But while US involvement in taking down the head of the Sinaloa Cartel on Saturday seems clear, there was no sign of the helicopter swoops through his mountain strongholds that some had imagined, or even the kind of desperate final shootout that has felled other Mexican capos in the past. Instead, the 56-year-old was taken without a shot being fired as he slept in a nondescript beachside condominium in the resort city of Mazatlán.

New details emerging suggest a step-by-step operation based on phone taps and key arrests, helped by a stroke of luck at the last minute.

"It was really drug investigations 101," a US federal official told the Washington Post.

The Mexican authorities have yet to officially reveal more than that the final strike followed a near miss last week when the authorities stormed a safe house in the state capital, Culiacán. The house was connected to others by tunnels interlinked by the city's drainage system, and accessed by trap doors hidden under bathtubs.

According to a senior US government official cited by the Associated Press, Mexican marines chased the capo into the tunnels but lost him in the maze. Dramatic as this must have been, it was more The Third Man than Scarface.

The official said the houses were located by US monitoring of key phones that led to arrests that provided more information. The near miss in Culiacán was followed by the detention of a cartel operative who revealed he had helped Guzmán and a woman escape the increasing heat in Culiacán for Mazatlán, though by that time the capo and his associates had stopped using the phones they knew were vulnerable.

That was, he said, until one of them popped up again on a network being monitored by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement that located Guzmán in the Miramar block of holiday and retirement apartments in Mazatlán.

"It just all came together and we got the right people to flip and we were up on good wire," the official said. "The ICE wire was the last one standing. That got him inside that hotel."

The Mexican newspaper Reforma published a contrasting version of events, citing Mexican security sources, identifying the big break as an arrest in the central city of Puebla on 12 February that led to the identification of a satellite phone used by Chapo to organise his escape from Culiacán. The same phone was reportedly activated again later in Mazatlán on Sunday night.

By dawn, marines were storming apartment 401 to pick up a bleary-eyed and shirtless Chapo before he had time to react.

Hours later he was being filmed handcuffed and wearing a light shirt and black jeans as he was walked to the helicopter about to take him back to jail.

The extent of US involvement remains unclear and controversial, particularly given reports in the New York Times that Drug Enforcement Agency and US Marshall Services agents had taken part in the operations on the ground, as well as by passing intelligence.

Mexican officials are traditionally sensitive to suggestions that they are not in control, while US agencies have an interest in stressing their role at a time of growing disquiet over US-backed drug crackdowns that have failed to stem the flow of drugs and are blamed for increasing violence.

The former Mexican drug tsar Samuel González said he had no doubt the DEA had been involved in the raid, citing the leaking of a photograph of Chapo to the US press Saturday morning, hours before the Mexican authorities confirmed the events. "It's like saying two plus two equals four" he said.

González added that the determination to get Chapo stemmed from US pressure after the notorious Sinaloa cartel kingpin Rafael Caro Quintero was released from jail last year. Caro Quintero was serving a long sentence for the 1985 murder of DEA agent Enrique Camarena, but was freed by a judge on a technicality.

"For the last 12 years the Sinaloa cartel was tolerated by the Mexican and US governments," he said. "But the US saw Caro Quintero's release as a slap in the face and the winds changed."