NEW YORK – The Colombian drug trafficker Harold Mauricio Poveda Ortega, alias El Conejo, who worked in Mexico for the Sinaloa cartel, broke down in tears this Wednesday during a session of the trial against the former Mexican Secretary of Public Security Genaro García Luna when he saw some images of his old mansion.
Asked by the Prosecutor’s Office, “El Conejo”, dressed in a dark suit and shirt, spoke with integrity about the murders he ordered, about kidnappings and even recounted in detail how he was tortured and humiliated by agents of the Mexican Federal Police.
However, he collapsed when images of his home in Mexico and its wild animals were projected onto a screen in the living room.
“It’s my house. It was my house,” said the narco with a broken voice and while he wiped his tears with one hand.
The images showed his tigers, his lions and a monkey, whose names “El Conejo” was listing as they appeared and that he kept in his house, which the media referred to at the time and he remembered as “the mansion of fantasy “: “A house that I made to my liking, to my imagination, a very nice house,” he said.
The house is located in Mexico City, in an area known as “El desierto de los leones”.
El Conejo, who is on probation in the United States awaiting sentencing, is a witness for the Prosecutor’s Office against García Luna, accused of drug trafficking.
In his testimony, he assured that he worked for Arturo Beltrán Leyva, head of the Beltrán Leyva Brothers clan, and that he was part of the Sinaloa clan until an internal war that broke out in 2008.
