Former Mexican minister Genaro Garcia Luna, a former champion of the fight against drugs in his country, was convicted on Tuesday by American justice of corruption and cocaine trafficking between Mexico and the United States and faces life imprisonment .
He is the most senior Mexican official to have been tried by federal justice in New York, in the war against the drug cartels of Central and South America which take advantage of the complicity of local ministers to flood the North American market.
The 12 jurors of the Brooklyn court found that this former public security minister of Mexican President Felipe Calderon (2006-2012) was guilty of five counts, including that of having received millions of dollars to protect the cartel of Sinaloa and to be involved in trafficking at least 53 tons of cocaine from Mexico to the United States from 2001 to 2012.
“Justice has been served,” spokesman for the current Mexican presidency, Jesus Ramirez, said on Twitter.
Before becoming minister, Mr. Garcia Luna, a mechanical engineer by trade, was from 2001 to 2005 a police officer and head of the intelligence agency against corruption and organized crime.
– Imperturbable –
His wife and their two children were present at the statement of the verdict in the face of which the former minister remained visibly imperturbable.
After several days of deliberation and a month-long trial, Mr. Garcia Luna, who did not say a word during the trial, was found guilty on all five counts and is now a “convicted felon”. is congratulated in a press release the powerful federal prosecutor’s office in Brooklyn.
“Garcia Luna, who was once the pinnacle of law enforcement in Mexico, will now live out the rest of his life as a traitor to his country and to the dedicated law enforcement who risk their lives to dismantle the cartels of drugs,” thundered federal prosecutor Breon Peace, quoted in the statement.
The sentence, which can range from 10 years in prison to life imprisonment, will be known in several weeks.
– Repentant “criminals” –
Since January 17, the prosecution had brought to the bar 26 prosecution witnesses, among whom nine are accused of drug trafficking, extradited to the United States to be tried there and collaborate with justice in order to obtain sentences. lightened.
Prosecutors had asked the jury to ‘get to know’ these repentant ‘criminals’ and ‘use common sense in finding (Garcia Luna) guilty’: a 54-year-old ‘two-faced’ drug minister who collaborated with Washington on one side; and “partner in crime” of the Sinaloa Cartel on the other.
It was this Brooklyn court that sentenced former Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman to life in prison in 2019. His sidekick, Colombian Dario Antonio Usuga, alias “Otoniel”, is awaiting trial in the same New York jurisdiction, while former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez has denied all drug trafficking charges brought against him by the Manhattan Federal Prosecutor’s Office.
Genaro Garcia Luna was arrested on December 9, 2019 in Dallas, Texas. Imprisoned since, he was accused, among other things, of having received millions of dollars in bribes to turn a blind eye to cartel trafficking.
– Florence Break case –
His lawyer Cesar de Castro pleaded on the contrary that there was “no proof that he received money” and that “the absence of proof is not proof”.
Since October 2020, Mr. Garcia Luna has pleaded not guilty.
Unrelated to this trial, his name is also known abroad, especially in France, because he was involved in the Florence Cassez case in the 2000s: he is thus accused of having co-organized and staged the arrest in December 2005 of the young woman and her companion at the time, Israel Vallarta.
The couple had been accused of being part of an organized crime gang, which at the time damaged diplomatic relations between President Calderon’s Mexico and President Nicolas Sarkozy’s France.
