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BFF-04
MEXICO-US-DIPLOMACY-DRUGS
Ex-defense chief’s arrest hits US-Mexican ties
MEXICO CITY, Oct 30, 2020 (BSS/AFP) – The United States’s shock arrest
earlier this month of a former Mexican defense minister on drug trafficking
charges has triggered a diplomatic row that experts say could jeopardize the
countries’ cooperation in fighting powerful cartels.
The indictment of General Salvador Cienfuegos, a key figure in ex-president
Enrique Pena Nieto’s 2012 to 2018 government, caught Mexico by surprise.
“Trust and cooperation have been damaged. All protocols between the two
countries have been broken,” Javier Oliva, a specialist in military affairs
at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, told AFP.
The Mexican government said Thursday that it had complained to the United
States that it was being kept in the dark about Cienfuegos’s case.
“We have made our deep dissatisfaction known to the United States that this
information has not been shared with our country,” Foreign Minister Marcelo
Ebrard told reporters.
Cienfuegos was detained at Los Angeles International Airport on October 15
while on a trip with his family, and charged with drug trafficking and money
laundering.
The 72-year-old retired general, nicknamed “The Godfather,” is accused of
conspiring to produce and distribute cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and
marijuana in the US, according to federal prosecutors in New York.
He allegedly abused his position “to help the H-2 Cartel, an extremely
violent Mexican drug trafficking organization,” according to documents
released by prosecutors.
– ‘Resentment’ in Mexico –
The indictment was filed in August 2019, but made public only after his
arrest, apparently due to suspicion of corruption among high-ranking Mexican
officials.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who has good relations with
his US counterpart Donald Trump, complained that the US Drug Enforcement
Agency (DEA) had acted behind his back.
Mike Vigil, former head of international operations for the DEA, said that
since Cienfuegos no longer holds any official position, there was no reason
to inform Mexico of his indictment.
But the arrest would have consequences, he said.
“In Mexico there’s resentment, and many in the US agencies no longer want
to share information with people in the military whom they consider corrupt,”
Vigil told AFP.
The case is being handled by the same court that sentenced drug lord
Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman to life in prison in 2019 and where Mexico’s former
public security minister Genaro Garcia Luna is being prosecuted.
Garcia Luna was detained in Texas in December 2019 on charges of taking
huge bribes to allow the notorious Sinaloa cartel to ship drugs into the US,
which he denies.
– ‘Brutal interference’ –
At least four people who worked with Cienfuegos are still on active duty,
although Lopez Obrador has sought to reassure the country that he personally
chose current Defense Minister Luis Sandoval.
“Corruption moves through networks, not individuals. There may be others
involved,” said Francisco Rivas, head of the National Citizen Observatory, a
civil society group.
US prosecutors say the evidence against Cienfuegos includes thousands of
Blackberry messages between the general and cartel members intercepted by the
authorities.
But some experts are skeptical.
“How is a general with a brilliant career going to give instructions on an
open phone to a low-profile criminal?” Oliva said.
The claim of the intercepted messages also fueled longstanding suspicions
that US agents spy on Mexican officials.
“It seems to me a brutal interference by the United States,” Renato Sales,
Mexican National Security Commissioner between 2015 and 2018, told the
newspaper El Universal.
He attributed what he called the “unlikely” accusations to rivalry between
US agencies ahead of the November 3 presidential election.
Cienfuegos’s arrest has triggered speculation over whether US authorities
could use him to go after even bigger targets with potentially even greater
repercussions for US-Mexican relations.
“Detainees are always asked to turn over people above them. The only one
above Cienfuegos was Pena Nieto,” said Vigil.
BSS/AFP/GMR/0918 hrs