He is the highest Mexican official to have been tried by federal justice in New York, in the war against the drug cartels of Central and South America. 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. The sentence, which can range from years in prison to life imprisonment, will be known in principle on June 27.
Read also: End of the explosive trial of Garcia Luna, the ex-chief of the Mexican police in the service of the cartels
After several days of deliberation and a month-long trial, the twelve jurors of the Brooklyn court found that this former Minister of Public Security for Mexican President Felipe Calderon (2006-2012) was guilty of five counts, including that of having received millions of dollars to protect the Sinaloa cartel and of being 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.
García Luna is convicted of drug trafficking, organized crime and false statements in the US Justice has arrived for the former squire of @FelipeCalderon. The crimes against our people will never be forgotten.
— Jesus Ramirez Cuevas (@JesusRCuevas) February 21, 2023
A “two-faced” man
Genaro Garcia Luna, who did not say a word during the proceedings, is now a “convicted felon”, welcomed 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 a statement.
From mid-January to mid-February, the prosecution had called 26 prosecution witnesses, including nine accused or convicted of drug trafficking, extradited to the United States to be tried there and collaborate with the justice in order to obtain reduced sentences.
Prosecutors had asked the jury to ‘get to know’ these repentant ‘criminals’ and ‘use common sense in convicting (Garcia Luna)’: 54-year-old ‘two-faced’ drug minister who collaborated with Washington on one side; “partner in crime” of the Sinaloa Cartel on the other.
His lawyer Cesar de Castro, who argued the entire trial on “the absence of evidence (which) is not evidence”, promised Tuesday, surrounded by supporters of Garcia Luna and hostile to former President Calderon, that his client “would continue the fight (…) to clear his name”. But without formally announcing a call.
Involved in the Florence Cassez case
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 denies all drug trafficking charges brought against him by the another federal prosecutor’s office in New York, in Manhattan.
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.
Before becoming minister, Genaro 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.
For further: In Mexico, it’s the day of truth for Florence Cassez
Unrelated to this trial, Garcia Luna is also known abroad, especially in France, because he was involved in the Florence Cassez affair: he is thus accused of having co-organized and staged the arrest in December 2005 of the young woman and her then-boyfriend, Israel Vallarta. The couple had been accused of being part of a gang, which at the time damaged diplomatic relations between President Calderon’s Mexico and President Nicolas Sarkozy’s France.