The former Mexican Secretary of Public Security Genaro García Luna was sentenced this Wednesday in a New York court to sentences totaling more than 38 years in prison, in addition to a two million dollar fine, for crimes of drug trafficking, collaboration with organized crime ( the Sinaloa Cartel) and for false testimony before the US authorities.
García Luna, 56 years old, who listened undaunted to the sentence, was the head of public security during the six-year term of Mexican President Felipe Calderón (2006-2012), a time in which he led the strategy of what was known as the ‘war against drugs’.
The former Mexican public official, whose defense announced that he will appeal the sentence and requested that he serve it near Washington DC, is sentenced to a total of 460 months for the crimes committed (38 years and 3 months of sentence), and also a supplemental up to six years of supervised release.
The double life of García Luna
The presiding judge Brian Cogan, in his final speech in which he read the sentence, accused him of having led a double life.
“He is not directly responsible for each of the deaths due to drug trafficking, but he was one of its great facilitators (…) You led a double life; on the one hand he had a loving family and on the other he allowed this great criminal enterprise (the Sinaloa Cartel) to continue operating (…) His way of thinking is very similar to that of Chapo,” said the judge.
García Luna, who maintained a serious expression during the hour-long session, to which he appeared in a dark gray suit and maroon tie, spoke for seven minutes and for the last time during the process he faced in federal court in New York.
“I want to confirm my innocence of all crimes before my family and before my country (…) The trial against me is the result of false information provided by the Government of Mexico. Once again it is demonstrated how the political powers really linked to drug trafficking operate,” said the highest Mexican official ever convicted in the United States, who was accompanied by his wife and two daughters in court.
After hearing the sentence, García Luna’s defense, led by his lawyer César de Castro, approached the former Mexican president with a satisfied expression, while his relatives expressed a certain relief, since the Prosecutor’s Office had requested a life sentence and five million dollars in fine.
De Castro insisted during the session that “20 years of sentence are not enough, they are too many” and argued that in no case should García Luna be sentenced to life imprisonment because not even presidents like the Honduran Juan Orlando Hernández, also sentenced for his links with drug trafficking, had such high penalties.
“You see a broken family there. The reputation of my client, who has demonstrated exemplary conduct during his time in prison, has been destroyed worldwide after a process directed by the highest political circles in Mexico.
How can 20 years of sentence not be enough? “De Castro repeated.
“He was worse than El Chapo”
A position to which the Prosecutor’s Office responded vehemently today, describing Felipe Calderón’s right-hand man in security matters as “the cartel itself”: “He protected the (Sinaloa) cartel, the cartel could not function without his connivance. “He was the poster,” they stated.
“He (García Luna) was worse than ‘El Chapo’ because without him, ‘El Chapo’ would not have been able to operate,” added the prosecutors, who added that his case was not comparable to that of the Honduran Juan Orlando Hernández because “Mexico is not a banana republic.”
In a subsequent statement, the prosecutor of the Eastern District of New York, Breon Peace, attributed to García Luna “the importation of more than one million kilograms of lethal narcotics” from Mexico to the United States, “incalculable violence” in both countries, and considered that the sentence sends a “strong message.”
After hearing Judge Cogan’s decision, a dozen Mexicans at the doors of the federal court in New York shouted in unison “Felipe Calderón, you are next”
The sentence was finally handed down more than a year and a half after he was found guilty of five charges in February 2023. At that time, the 12 members of the jury in the Federal Court for the Eastern District of New York unanimously found him responsible for the crimes.
Cogan already sentenced Joaquín ‘el Chapo’ Guzmán to life imprisonment in 2019 and will lead the case against the co-founder of the Sinaloa Cartel, Ismael ‘el Mayo’ Zambada, in this same court starting this Friday.
New York thus becomes the place where the major trials against Latin American ‘narcotics’ are settled.
#Mexican #Secretary #Security #Calderón #era #Genaro #García #Luna #sentenced #years #prison
