Former Mexican minister guilty of cocaine trafficking

UPDATE DAY

The former Mexican minister Genaro Garcia Luna, a former champion of the fight against drugs in his country, was found guilty on Tuesday by the American courts of corruption and cocaine trafficking between Mexico and the United States. United and faces life imprisonment. 

He is the highest Mexican official to be tried by federal justice in New York, in war against the drug cartels of America central and southern countries that take advantage of the complicity of local ministers to flood the North American market.

The 12 jurors of the Brooklyn court found that this former public security minister of Mexican President Felipe Calderon (2006-2012) was guilty of five counts, including that of having received millions of dollars to protect the cartel of Sinaloa and to be involved in the trafficking of at least 53 tons of cocaine from Mexico to the United States from 2001 to 2012.

“Justice has been served”, welcomed on Twitter the spokesperson for the current Mexican presidency, Jesus Ramirez.

Before becoming a minister, Mr. Garcia Luna, a mechanical engineer by trade, was from 2001 to 2005 a police officer and head of the agency intelligence against corruption and organized crime.

Imperturbable

His wife and their two children were present at the statement of the verdict, in the face of which the former minister remained visibly unperturbed.

After several days of deliberation and a month-long trial, Mr. Garcia Luna, who did not say a word during the proceedings, was found guilty on five counts and is now a “convicted criminal”, welcomed in a statement on powerful federal prosecutor's office in Brooklyn.

“Garcia Luna, who was once the pinnacle of law enforcement in Mexico, will now live out the rest of his life as a traitor to his country and to the dedicated law enforcement who risk their lives to dismantle the cartels of drugs,” thundered federal prosecutor Breon Peace, quoted in the press release.

The sentence, which can range from 10 years in prison to life imprisonment, will be known in several weeks.

Repentant “Criminals”

Since January 17, the prosecution had brought to the stand 26 prosecution witnesses, among whom nine are accused of drug trafficking, extradited to the United States for trial and to collaborate with justice in order to obtain sentences. lighter.

Prosecutors had asked the jury to “get to know” these repentant “criminals” and to “use common sense in convicting (Garcia Luna)”: a 54-year-old man “with two faces”, an anti-drug minister who collaborated with Washington on one side; and “partner in crime” of the Sinaloa Cartel on the other.

It was this Brooklyn court that in 2019 sentenced former Sinaloa Cartel leader Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. His sidekick, Colombian Dario Antonio Usuga, alias “Otoniel”, is awaiting trial in the same New York jurisdiction, while former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez has denied all drug trafficking charges brought against him by the Manhattan Federal Prosecutor's Office.

Genaro Garcia Luna was arrested on December 9, 2019 in Dallas, Texas. Imprisoned since, he was accused, among other things, of having received millions of dollars in bribes to turn a blind eye to cartel trafficking.

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His lawyer Cesar de Castro pleaded on the contrary that there was “no proof that he received money” and that “the absence of proof is not proof”.

Since October 2020, Mr. Garcia Luna has pleaded not guilty.