General Salvador Cienfuegos during an act in 2017 Illustrated Service (Automatic) / Europa Press
The Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has defended the decision of the Prosecutor's Office to exonerate General Salvador Cienfuegos and has accused the DEA, the United States anti-drug agency, of fabricating the crimes of drug trafficking and money laundering that charged him with the American justice in October of last year.
"The Prosecutor's Office decided that the accusation that the DEA fabricated against General Cienfuegos is not applicable," the president concluded during his morning conference.
López Obrador's position represents a major challenge against the US authorities and increases mistrust between the two countries less than a week after Democrat Joe Biden takes office as president.
The Mexican president has requested that the case file be made public.
However, the express exoneration of Cienfuegos, in a country where more than 90% of crimes go unpunished, opens a series of questions that dot the judicial independence that the Government seeks, the Administration itself and the strength of the armed forces in the country.
The Attorney General of the Republic exonerated this Thursday of all the charges to which he was Secretary of Defense during the Government of Enrique Peña Nieto (from 2012 to 2018).
The military man returned to Mexico in mid-November after being accused by the United States of cooperating with the Beltrán Leyva clan of drug traffickers.
A request through diplomatic channels from the López Obrador government forced Washington to withdraw the charges of drug trafficking and money laundering, just one month after being detained at the Los Angeles airport on October 15.
"It is a decision made by the Prosecutor's Office, but that the Government that I represent second, supports," the Mexican president has sentenced this Friday.
In the middle of the diplomatic conflict in November, Washington sent the Mexican authorities 700 pages of evidence (collected from 2013 to 2018) that established the case against the former army chief.
The Government of Mexico promised public opinion to investigate the case, but just under two months after the general set foot on Mexican territory, all the data presented has been rejected.
The Prosecutor's Office has dismissed the US file and has concluded that none of these indications are sufficient to link the general to the crimes of drug trafficking and money laundering.
This Friday the president also challenged the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA): “We asked them for everything they had.
If it was not like that and they have more, we are open to receive all the tests.
But we do not want speculation, fabrication of crimes, revenge and we do not accept intimidation.
We are a free, independent and sovereign country ”.
The Mexican president has also insinuated that the general's arrest responded more to electoral reasons than to public security issues.
"How did these things happen?
You have to see times.
Politics is time.
This occurs on the eve of the elections in the United States, ”López Obrador has repeated.
And he has insisted that "they acted in violation of a commitment, including an agreement to share information, because there was no trust between the parties."
López Obrador has announced that the complete file of the case, the more than 700 pages of investigation against the general, will be made public this Friday: “We apologize to the United States Government for acting in this way, because they can say that how we make known this document, where it is evident that the evidence that was collected in many years is not solid, supposedly.
We do it because the prestige of our nation is above all.
And we cannot be anyone's hostage ”.
The Government has tried to calm the waters by announcing this transparency measure, so that any citizen can consult the indications rejected by the Prosecutor's Office.
But just a month ago, the authorities shielded the Cienfuegos file for five years so as not to put the case or relations with the United States in security matters at risk.
This morning the November words of Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard sounded in which he declared that it would be an "almost suicidal act to bring him to Mexico and then do nothing, because for that he would have better stayed in the United States."
Ebrard, subjected to a barrage of criticism, responded this Friday: “I know what I said, but, be careful, what the Prosecutor's Office did is summon Cienfuegos and what it informs us is that of the elements provided by the United States, investigated by the Public Ministry and confronted with the defense, there are no elements to support the accusation against the general.
It's not that nothing has been done, it was done ”.
The chancellor has also mentioned that "there are other important elements that must be investigated" within the file, although he has not provided further details.
And he has remarked that the probative material available to the Prosecutor's Office was not only not enough to bind the general, but also "in Mexico they could not even have detained him."
The exoneration of General Cienfuegos has compromised the independence of the Mexican judiciary and has consolidated the enormous role that the Army plays in the López Obrador government. Not in the years of the war on drug trafficking, had the military had similar power. Since the president took office in 2018, the Armed Forces have become the Government's standard for public security tasks - with the creation of the National Guard corps -, they have been assigned the construction of airports, the fight against illegal migration, in addition to the distribution of vaccines in the midst of the health crisis. The arrest of Cienfuegos was a blow to the liver to the prestige of a key institution in the Government and many critical voices see in the exoneration of the general a new ordeal to one of the pillars of this Administration.