Genaro García Luna, Secretary of Public Security in it Felipe Calderon’s government, spoke publicly yesterday, for the first time since he was arrested in Dallas in December 2019. He did so through a letter made known by sand lawyer Cesar de Castro -perhaps inspired by what he did Ismael El Mayo Zambada a week after his capture-, already three weeks that the Judge Brian Coganof the Brooklyn Eastern District CourtI dictated to him judgment after having been found guilty of receiving bribes from the Sinaloa Cartelwhere he turned his batteries against the President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
Nothing he says in the letter will mitigate Cogan’s verdict, which, based on experiences in the American justice system, is likely to result in a sentence of more than 200 years, knowing that negotiations are usually carried out afterwards and sentences are significantly reduced. Garcia Luna He assumes that this will happen, but also that he will appeal the sentence in a collegiate court, hoping that it will be reversed along with the conviction. The lines outlined in his statement seem to contain the essence of what he ultimately wants: the annulment of the trial and the reinstatement of the proceedings, which, if it were to happen, would probably be dropped by the prosecution and dismissed.
That was what García Luna’s defense claimed when it presented a motion to Judge Cogan for a mistrial, arguing that six prosecution witnesses had committed perjury. Cogan accepted the motion and asked the prosecutors to speak personally with the witnesses – five of whom were linked to the case. Sinaloa Cartel-, which is unusual.
On August 8, however, he canceled everything he had promoted and announced that he was rejecting the motion, setting the reading of the sentence for October 9. Lawyers in New York interpreted the radical change of Cogan to the capture of Zambada two weeks earlier, whose trial he will preside over, so as not to enter into territory where he could damage the credibility of protected criminal witnesses who could be used by prosecutors in future cases.
The letter of Garcia Luna It is a plea of innocence. It states that the evidence that offered the Lopez Obrador government to USA -which former Attorney General William Barr requested from then Secretary of Security Alfonso Durazo- were false -alleged income from organized crime, whose lawsuits in Mexico against the Attorney General’s Office won last October-, and that the criminals who accused him were arrested by his team, imprisoned and extradited to the United States. But above all, in two moments of the document, he makes direct accusations against the president.
The first, at the beginning of the letter, states that prosecutors repeatedly offered him a deal to plead guilty to crimes at the request of the Mexican government, which wanted “not to charge criminals-drug traffickers, (but) to charge people and institutions that in the short term would weaken the development, public peace and institutional life of the country,” in exchange for his freedom in six months and receiving economic benefits. García Luna never accepted the deal, as revealed in this space on March 12.
The second is in the first paragraph of the third page of the letter, where it reveals that “in the official records of Mexico and the United States,” there are contacts, videos, audios, photographs, communication records and management between López Obrador and his drug trafficking operators, one of whom, who had testified against him, accused the president and his operators of being linked to them. García Luna did not identify him, but it is Jesús Reynaldo El Rey Zambada, who made those accusations during the trial of Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán, and whom De Castro tried, unsuccessfully, to incorporate into his defense. El Rey is El Mayo’s brother, and was in charge of taking care of the plaza in Mexico City when López Obrador was head of government.
The wording of this paragraph seems like a nod to the prosecutors in Brooklyn and, in general, to the United States government, which in recent months seems to have become fed up with López Obrador and has begun to leak investigations against him for links to drug trafficking to the press of both countries, which were closed for political reasons. It is possible that a double bet by the former secretary has to do with the search for an agreement with them, but not on the terms they had proposed, because he continues to say he is innocent and has refused to be a protected witness, but on his own.
García Luna has revealed the missiles he claims to have against Lopez Obrador. The former secretary was trained in the areas of intelligence since the mid-80s, sharing sensitive information with US agencies during many of them. As Secretary of Public Security he learned the details of the capture of King Zambada and who in the government of Lopez Obrador negotiated the protection agreement Sinaloa CartelAs Secretary of Security, he was familiar with the file that the DEA gave to President Calderón on López Obrador’s links to drug trafficking, which he never wanted to use to harm his adversary.
What appears to be a nod to prosecutors is a direct threat to López Obrador. How many videos, audios, photographs and wiretaps will García Luna have in his hands against the president? How many from officials in his government? Or from Claudia Sheinbaum’s next one? It is difficult to know what his trove of information holds, probably currently guarded in the United States. It is also difficult to know how much additional information he has collected at the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center, where he is being held, where drug traffickers from various Mexican cartels are also being held.
What cannot be ignored or minimized is the firepower that García Luna has and the decision to speak, not after the sentence, but before, which underlines his final decision not to remain silent, no matter what happens to him.
X: @rivapa_oficial
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