Mexico City.- The United States Department of Justice today requested a life sentence for former Secretary of Public Security (SSP), Genaro García Luna, who was found guilty of collaborating with the Sinaloa Cartel.
Prosecutor Breon Peace asked federal Judge Brian Cogan to keep García Luna in prison for the rest of his life due to the seriousness of the crimes, for which a jury has already found him guilty, in addition to imposing a fine of at least five million dollars. The judge will announce his sentence on October 9.
“In exchange for millions of dollars, the defendant facilitated a conspiracy responsible for the deaths of thousands of Mexican and American citizens. It is difficult to overstate the magnitude of the defendant’s crimes, the deaths and addictions they facilitated, and his betrayal of the people of Mexico and the United States,” the prosecution said. It recalled that the Federal Police, under García Luna’s command, not only allowed the Sinaloa Cartel to work, but also provided it with weapons and uniforms, protecting its hitmen when they executed a rival.
He added that life imprisonment is a penalty proportional to the importance of the positions held by García Luna in Mexico, during the governments of Vicente Fox and, above all, Felipe Calderón, when he was head of the SSP.
As a benchmark, the judge was reminded of the case of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was also prosecuted for drug trafficking in New York, with a sentence of 45 years in prison and a fine of eight million dollars. The prosecution stressed that Garcia Luna did not come from the poor background or broken families of many drug traffickers, but was part of a family with a stable income, received a university education, and became a member of a presidential cabinet. “The defendant has not shown remorse for his criminal conduct, but has continued to commit crimes while in custody, trying to obstruct justice by offering bribes to other criminals in the prison where he is being held,” it said. It should be remembered that only one of the crimes for which a jury found Garcia Luna guilty, that of continuing criminal enterprise, carries a minimum sentence of twenty years in prison. The 56-year-old former official, who this week released a letter reiterating his innocence and accused President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of being complicit in drug trafficking, was arrested in the United States in December 2019.
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