MEXICO CITY (AP) – Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has accused the US Drug Enforcement Administration of fabricating drug trafficking charges against the country’s former Secretary of Defense, while his administration published hundreds of pages of US files claiming detailed evidence to show the close ties to a drug gang.
The decision to denounce US prosecutors Friday while acquitting a top official on charges adds to a crisis in security cooperation for President-elect Joe Biden’s incoming administration.
It follows the Mexican government’s decision to restrict US agents and waive their immunity, seemingly a slap in the face after US attempts to appease Mexico by releasing retired General Salvador Cienfuegos to face trial in Mexico.
The US Department of Justice said it was “deeply disappointed” by the closure of the case against Cienfuegos. It also said the publication of the evidence violates a legal aid treaty and raises the question of whether the US can continue to share information.
It also said the published material showed the strength of the evidence against Cienfuegos.
López Obrador has relied heavily on the military for a wide variety of projects that go far beyond security. In this case, he said that while many Mexicans consider US courts to be “the good judges, impeccable … in this case, with all due respect, those who conducted this investigation were not acting professionally.”
His government then published a 751-page file that the US authorities had shared in support of what they intended to be Mexican prosecution of Cienfuegos. Intercepted Blackberry messages exchanges between traffickers who have since been murdered were marked “Shared by court order, not for further distribution.”
It was not immediately clear whether the release of the documents would affect other lawsuits in the US.
The US government dropped its charges against Cienfuegos in a diplomatic concession to Mexico in November and sent him home, where he was immediately released.
López Obrador said Friday that Mexican prosecutors dropped the case because the evidence shared by the United States was of no value to prove he committed a crime.
“Why did they do the research like that?” López Obrador said. “Without support, without proof?”
The documents released included alleged intercepted text messages between the leader of the H-2 cartel in the Pacific coastal state of Nayarit and a top assistant, who reportedly served as a middleman with the general, often referred to as ‘The Godfather’. “And once as” Salvador Sinfuego Sepeda. “
In a conversation, Daniel Silva Garate told his boss, Juan Francisco Patrón Sánchez, that he had been picked up by men with military-style short haircuts and taken to the Ministry of Defense headquarters in Mexico City to meet with “The Godfather. “
Silva-Garate tells his boss that “The Godfather” said to him, “Now we’re going to do great things to you … that what you’ve done is small.”
Patrón Sanchez says he wants unimpeded routes to send drugs from Colombia and send Silva Garate text messages back: “He says as long as he’s here you’ll be free … they’ll never do strong surgery” or raids.
Silva Garate tells his boss that “The Godfather” told him, “You can sleep peacefully, no surgery will hit you.”
Other exchanges describe that The Godfather reportedly offered to arrange a boat to transport drugs, introduce the traffickers to other officials, and acknowledged helping other traffickers in the past.
At his daily press conference Friday, López Obrador, who has made the fight against corruption a theme of his government, insisted that his government should not hide anyone.
“We’re not going to invent crimes. We’re not going to make up anything, ”he said. “We have to act on the facts, the evidence, the reality.”
The United States Department of Justice has released a statement saying it can resume prosecution of Cienfuegos if Mexico doesn’t. And in a statement Thursday night, Mexico’s attorney general went beyond simply announcing that it would close the case by completely purging the general.
General Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda has never met, nor communicated with, the criminal organization investigated by the US authorities, nor took any action to protect or assist those individuals, “the agency said. a statement.
It said Cienfuegos had no illicit or abnormal income, nor was any evidence found “that he had issued a warrant to favor the criminal group in question.”
Gladys McCormick, an associate professor of history at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, said the only surprise was that Mexico wasn’t looking at Cienfuegos any better.
“You would think they would have gone through at least some semblance of an investigation, if only to show the illusion that the rule of law exists,” McCormick said. “On the Mexican side, this is a sign of the deep-seated control the military as an institution has over power.”
López Obrador has given the military more responsibility than any president in recent memory, relying on it to build massive infrastructure projects and most recently to distribute the COVID-19 vaccine, in addition to extensive safety duties.
Cienfuegos was arrested after being secretly indicted by a federal grand jury in New York in 2019, accused of conspiring with the H-2 cartel to smuggle thousands of kilos of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana while serving as minister from 2012 of Defense. until 2018.
Although the US sent Cienfuegos home, a few weeks later the Mexican Congress passed a law restricting US agents in Mexico and overriding their diplomatic immunity.
Mike Vigil, former chief of international operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration, said the cleanup of Cienfuegos “could be the straw that broke the camel’s back as far as US-Mexico cooperation in combating drug activities.”
“It was ordained that Mexican justice would not proceed with prosecuting General Cienfuegos,” said Vigil. “It will seriously affect the integrity of his judicial system and despite the political rhetoric to eradicate corruption, it clearly is not. The rule of law has been significantly violated. “
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AP writer E. Eduardo Castillo in Mexico City contributed to this report.