The person as soon as heralded because the architect of Mexico’s conflict towards drug cartels was sentenced to greater than 38 years in a US jail on Wednesday (Oct. 16, 2024) for accepting large bribes to assist drug traffickers.
Genaro García Luna, Mexico’s former public safety secretary, was convicted by a New York jury in 2023 of accepting thousands and thousands of {dollars} in bribes to guard the violent Sinaloa cartel he was supposedly preventing. He’s the highest-level Mexican authorities official convicted in the US.
At his sentencing listening to earlier than a federal decide in Brooklyn on Wednesday, García Luna continued to keep up his innocence and stated the case towards him was based mostly on false info from criminals and the Mexican authorities.
“I’ve a agency respect for the regulation,” he stated in Spanish. “I’ve not dedicated these crimes.”
García Luna, 56, led Mexico’s federal police earlier than holding a cabinet-level place as prime safety official from 2006 to 2012 throughout the administration of then-President Felipe Calderón. On the time, García Luna was hailed as an ally by the US in its struggle towards drug trafficking.
However U.S. prosecutors stated that in trade for thousands and thousands of {dollars}, he offered intelligence on investigations towards the cartel, info on rival gangs and the protected passage of large portions of medication.
After the sentencing, Calderón stated by social platform X that he respects the court docket’s resolution however that he by no means had “verifiable proof” of García Luna’s felony actions. Calderón stated that confronting the cartels “was one of the vital troublesome selections of my life. However I might do it once more as a result of it’s the proper factor to do.”
Earlier, outdoors the courthouse, a bunch of about 15 protesters celebrated the decision. Some held a banner that stated, in Spanish, “Calderón did know,” whereas others brandished indicators denouncing his political get together.
Prosecutors had requested for a life sentence. García Luna’s legal professionals had argued that he ought to obtain not more than 20 years.
U.S. District Choose Brian Cogan stated he was unmoved by previous reward García Luna obtained for his work within the conflict on medication.
“That was his cowl,” Choose Cogan stated earlier than imposing the sentence. “You might be responsible of those crimes, sir. You may’t flaunt these phrases and say, ‘I am the police officer of the 12 months.'”
Along with the sentence of 38 years and 4 months, the decide imposed a nice of two million {dollars}.
Throughout the trial, images had been proven of García Luna shaking palms with former President Barack Obama and talking with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former Senator John McCain.
However prosecutors stated García Luna secretly promoted a drug trafficking conspiracy that resulted within the deaths of hundreds of American and Mexican residents. He ensured that drug traffickers had been notified upfront of raids and sabotaged reputable police operations aimed toward apprehending cartel leaders, they stated.
Drug traffickers had been capable of ship greater than 1 million kilograms of cocaine by Mexico and the US utilizing planes, trains, vehicles and submarines whereas García Luna was in workplace, prosecutors stated.
Throughout the trial of former Sinaloa kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán in the identical court docket in 2018, a former cartel member testified that he personally delivered no less than $6 million in bribes to García Luna and that cartel members agreed to boost as much as $50 million. to pay for his or her safety.
“He enabled the signal. He protected the cartel. He was the cartel,” Assistant U.S. Legal professional Saritha Komatireddy instructed the decide Wednesday.
García Luna enabled a corrupt system that allowed violent cartels to thrive and distribute medication that killed multitudes of individuals, he added.
“It might not have been the accused who pulled the set off, however he has blood on his palms,” Komatireddy stated.
Prosecutors additionally stated García Luna deliberate to undo final 12 months’s verdict by searching for to bribe or corruptly persuade a number of inmates on the Metropolitan Detention Middle in Brooklyn to assist false allegations that two authorities witnesses communicated by way of contraband cellphones. earlier than the trial.
García Luna’s lawyer, César de Castro, stated that the protection intends to attraction the sentence. He stated his consumer is somebody who “has served his nation” and has now misplaced his cash, his status and the insurance policies he defended in Mexico.
“He has misplaced nearly every little thing. The one factor that is still is his great household,” Castro stated.
In Mexico, newly inaugurated President Claudia Sheinbaum briefly commented on the case Tuesday, saying: “The large drawback right here is how somebody who was awarded by U.S. businesses, to whom former President Calderón stated great issues about his safety secretary, Immediately he’s imprisoned in jail. “United States as a result of it has been confirmed that he was linked to drug trafficking.”
García Luna’s arrest and conviction grew to become a political cudgel that Sheinbaum’s ruling get together and his predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, used on this 12 months’s Mexican presidential election towards Calderón’s weakened Nationwide Motion Get together. They tried to color García Luna because the poster boy for corruption and Calderón as the person answerable for the rising violence of the drug conflict.
López Obrador and now Sheinbaum have moved away from direct confrontation with the cartels and have targeted on what they see as root causes of violence, resembling poverty. However the brand new technique has didn’t considerably scale back the extent of violence.
López Obrador had a really completely different response in 2020 when US authorities arrested former Mexican Protection Secretary Salvador Cienfuegos for alleged collusion with a drug cartel. In that case, López Obrador accused the DEA of fabricating proof towards Cienfuegos and protested till the US authorities dropped the costs. He was returned to Mexico, the place he was shortly acquitted and launched.
Revealed – October 17, 2024 01:06 pm IST