The assemblies of the police and a drug zoo, exposed in the trial against Genaro García Luna

Colombian drug trafficker Harold Poveda, alias El Conejo, after his arrest by the Federal Police, on November 5, 2010. Saúl López (Cuartoscuro)

Harold Poveda, alias

, was eating strawberries and cream with his girlfriend in a restaurant south of Mexico City when a group of federal policemen captured him.

It was four in the afternoon on November 4, 2010, but he was not presented to the authorities and the media until the next day at six in the morning.

Before that, the Colombian drug lord was kidnapped, tortured and forced to record a video reading a false confession, dictated letter by letter by the agents.

“Are you The Rabbit, son of a bitch?

Because you already screwed yourself”.

This was reported this Wednesday by the last witness in the trial against Genaro García Luna, who testified for four hours in the New York court about the police setup surrounding his arrest.

Although he said that he never met him, the testimony of

was able to put in the jury's sights one of the darkest passages in the management of the Secretary of Public Security of the Government of Felipe Calderón (2006-2012): the shadow of illegal arrests, simulations in the face of public opinion and the media circus that was mounted after each hit on drug trafficking.

Along the way, Poveda told all kinds of details about his extravagant career in the underworld and couldn't hold back tears as he explained how he lost a luxurious property where he kept all kinds of exotic animals captive, his personal zoo .

“The press called it the mansion of fantasy,” said the former member of the Sinaloa Cartel proudly.

"It was a very nice house."

Elements of the Federal Police and the PGR in the house that belonged to Poveda, on October 19, 2008. Julieta Mora (Cuartoscuro)

The kingpin of the million kilos of cocaine

Poveda, 49, began in drug trafficking in the early 1990s.

He started out as a street cocaine dealer, but over time he made several clients and made the leap to trafficking several tons of drugs from Colombia to Mexico.

At first, he was an “independent” drug trafficker, he didn't report to anyone.

His reckless style of moving "merchandise" around the Mexican Pacific landed him in trouble.

When Arturo Beltrán, one of the bloodiest bosses of the Sinaloa Cartel, realized that he was invading his territory, he ordered him to be killed.

"He controlled that plaza, the entire coast from Acapulco to Ixtapa Zihuatanejo," he recounted with a strong Vallero accent.

In the midst of the rush, he contacted a friend who worked for Ismael

Zambada, Beltrán's old associate, to plead for his life.

Finally, he got a meeting with the leaders of the cartel.

"El Mayo was super cool with me," he said.

Not only did he avoid being assassinated, he also got a new job under the boss's orders, in charge of facilitating continuous shipments of between nine and ten tons of Colombian cocaine.

Zambada was happy, but Beltrán still felt resentful.

“I continued to be afraid that they would kill me,” he admitted.

After a year, it was time to ask his boss for another favor: to return to Colombia.

The brother of the capo and head of the organization at the Mexico City airport, Jesús

Zambada arranged everything for him to return.

She didn't even have to go through immigration.

"He recommended me to some police officers, they led the way and took me to the door of the plane," he said.

"It was a beauty."

Jesús 'El Rey' Zambada, during the trial of 'El Chapo' Guzmán, in 2019. JANE ROSENBERG (REUTERS)

His stay in South America did not last long.

In a Colombian cartel conflict, another drug trafficker threatened to kill him and he had to return to Mexico.

But he no longer went to work with El Mayo, his direct boss was Arturo Beltrán himself.

"He told me that there would be no problem, to be calm," he narrated.

He and the man who had wanted to kill him a few months ago became close.

“There was a father and son relationship,” he explained.

He was no longer afraid of him, now he called him “uncle, dear”.

Their relationship resulted in profits of between 300 and 400 million dollars for El Conejo.

At the end of his criminal career, he pleaded guilty in the United States to having trafficked more than a million kilos of cocaine, 1,000 tons.

The tears of 'The Rabbit'

Póveda was known as

because he liked to brand drug shipments from Colombia with the Playboy bunny logo.

He other times he used the Coca Cola logo.

It wasn't really his drug.

He was an intermediary: "My job was to link up the big drug traffickers in Colombia and Mexico."

He earned between three and four million dollars for every 10 tons that he managed to “crown”, 5% of what the cartel leaders earned.

Yet he also had to contribute to paying bribes to federal and state officials.

"Arturo [Beltrán] told me you have to put 300,000, 400,000 dollars so that we pay the government," he assured.

But it was worth it, criminals moved freely.

"One was super calm," he said.

He could get through everything from roadblocks to breathalyzer checks.

El Conejo said that everything changed after the war between the group of Joaquín

Guzmán and

Zambada against the Beltrán Leyva brothers, in early 2008. Always according to his version, Arturo Beltrán was convinced that García Luna had taken sides by their old partners and new rivals, because most of the operations were against them.

Poveda gave an example.

There was a time when the authorities tried to stop him.

He was at a party at “the fantasy mansion”.

On the property he had tigers, panthers, a chimpanzee, "some spectacular cockatoos" and a lion he named Apollo.

He also owned an English bulldog he named Jester and a Persian cat, "spectacular too," named Perico, who was white as cocaine.

The boss took several minutes to explain that Perico was a reference to coca and, before, to tell the jury everything about his passion for animals.

He had almost 200 fine horses, hippos, pumas, and giraffes.

When he returned to the account of that night, he said that shortly after one in the morning, a group of agents knocked on his door.

"There are some police officers at the door who want to come in," one of his workers told him.

Two cats that were part of the Poveda private zoo, in an image from October 2008. Julieta Mora (Cuartoscuro)

Assistant prosecutor Philip Pilmar showed the court a minute and a half video from a day after the operation, in which his father, a cousin and several of his employees were arrested.

In the chronicles of that time, it was written that the federal police officers stayed to continue the party with 40 luxury prostitutes, although Poveda did not speak about it in the New York court.

Despite everything, he managed to escape and embarked on a leapfrog journey through the Desert of Lions.

“That's the door the feds couldn't open,” he recounted.

"That was my disco," he continued.

"Those are the gardens."

"I brought that door from India."

Seeing the images of his most precious house, The Rabbit began to cry.

"It was El Rey who did me that damage," he said with a broken voice.

His revenge came days later, when the Beltrán Leyva cartel delivered information to another police corporation unrelated to García Luna and they captured the brother of El Mayo Zambada in October 2008. According to Poveda and the testimony of other drug traffickers in the trial such as Sergio Villarreal

and Oscar Nava Valencia

It was the members of the Beltrán Leyva themselves who disguised themselves as policemen and handed him over.

El Conejo also spoke of the cartel giving money to a journalist to report the arrest and spread the word, along the same lines as the story El Lobo gave this week, although no names were mentioned.

"Arturo called me to ask me to please give him $300,000 urgently to send money to the members of the communication so that they would start reporting it and Rey could not reach an agreement," he assured.

“How much are you going to pay for your freedom?”

Póveda's arrest occurred in a restaurant near El Ajusco, south of the Mexican capital, by federal police officers in civilian clothes, according to his version.

He specified how they put him in a car, put a feminine towel over his eyes and began to beat him until the vehicle reached a safe house.

“How much are you going to pay for your freedom?

How much are you willing to pay to get out of here?" The agents asked him, in his words.

“They start putting mineral water up my nose and they cover my mouth,” said El Conejo, explaining a torture method known in Mexico as

.

“They blindfolded me,” he continued.

“They put a plastic bag on me to suffocate me.”

"They undressed me."

"They gave me electric shocks."

"Until I couldn't take it anymore," he settled.

The agents tortured him into telling them where his houses were in Mexico City, according to his statement.

When he surrendered, the blindfold was removed from his eyes.

"Now, you son of a bitch, you're not going to see anywhere else but this computer."

They put him in front of a screen with Google Maps and made him write the addresses of two of his properties "to loot them."

But they did not let him go.

“They came back and blindfolded me,” he said.

"Touch your face," the police ordered.

“Then they made me play various things,” he recalled.

"I touched and felt that they were bullets, magazines, long weapons, a goat horn [AK-47], an AR-15 and they made me touch a kilo of cocaine."

Harold Poveda, El Conejo, presented by the Federal Police after his arrest, on November 5, 2010.

Then they gave him his clothes, he got dressed and was sent to a government office.

“We are going to remove the blindfold, but you are only going to see the camera.

If not, we're going to hit you again."

When he could see again, he realized that he was in the facilities of the Federal Police, the corporation run by García Luna.

“We are going to ask you some questions and you are going to answer them well”.

He first said his name and what was his name.

The next question was what he did.

"Trader," he replied.

"No, you have to say that you are a drug dealer."

When they told him to explain who he worked for, he said that he was following the orders of Arturo Beltrán.

“No, you have to say that you work for

Guzman”.

And then he "confessed" that he also worked for the leader of the rivals, just when the corporation was being accused of favoring that group.

Early the next day, Poveda was presented at a Federal Police hangar at the Mexico City airport.

Disconcerted and dressed in an orange sweatshirt, El Conejo was presented in front of the weapons and drugs that he said they made him touch a few hours before.

He assures that none of it was his.

It was a time when every detainee was displayed like a trophy.

The brand of the house during the first years of the war against drug trafficking and the management of García Luna as a Cabinet official.

Cornered, Póveda became a protected witness in Mexico until he was extradited to the United States in early 2012. After pleading guilty, the million-kilo cocaine kingpin faces a minimum of 20 years in prison and a maximum sentence of imprisonment. life.

He spent nine years in prison in both countries and also bribed US guards with "tips" to extend his conjugal visits for more hours.

Since mid-2019, he has been on probation, after paying a million-dollar bail.

His uncle, Arturo Beltrán, was killed by the Navy in October 2009. "I don't think they killed him, I think he killed himself before," he declared at the hearing.

He is expected to return to the podium in Thursday's session to answer questions from García Luna's lawyers and a new round of interrogations from the Prosecutor's Office.

The authorities will have the challenge of linking the testimony in some way with the former secretary, who is accused of three charges for drug trafficking, one for organized crime and another for making false statements.

subscribe here

to the EL PAÍS México

and receive all the key information on current affairs in this country