Mexican president faces music after drug lord's prison break

Mexico City 

Mexico's president faced a public relations nightmare Friday as he confronted fallout from the escape of a notorious drug lord, but said he was "fully confident" the kingpin would be recaptured. 

The weekend flight of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, the country's most notorious capo, is a stinging embarrassment for a government that had pointed to his arrest last year as its biggest victory yet in the war on drugs. 

As President Enrique Pena Nieto returned from France, seven prison officials from the jail where Guzman escaped were charged over the affair and taken to a federal detention center.

Pena Nieto had been flying to France Saturday when word broke that Guzman had escaped -- for the second time in 14 years.

Rather than return home, he went ahead with the five-day visit, knowing a firestorm with his name all over it was brewing back home. 

Pena Nieto addressed the debacle from his presidential complex, acknowledging that the episode had outraged the Mexican people.

Guzman's escape has "caused frustration and fury across broad sectors of society," he said.

"I am sure and I am fully confident that, with the valor, courage and determination of our armed forces and federal security forces... we will again recapture him," Pena Nieto said during the speech.