Édgar Veytia assures that Calderón and García Luna ordered to protect El Chapo against the rest of the drug traffickers

Édgar Veytia is questioned by Saritha Komatireddy during the trial of the former Secretary of Public Security of Mexico, Genaro García Luna in New York City, (USA). JANE ROSENBERG (REUTERS)

Édgar Veytia, alias

, assured this Tuesday that the instruction of the Government of Felipe Calderón and the Secretary of Public Security (SSP) of Genaro García Luna was to protect Joaquín

Guzmán and the Sinaloa Cartel.

The testimony of the former Nayarit prosecutor is the first to point directly to the former president of Mexico (2006-2012) in the drug trafficking trial against García Luna in New York.

“The line was [to protect] El Chapo,” he declared.

“We had to protect the Chapos and not the Beltrán Leyva,” he added about the cartel war that plunged the country into a wave of violence.

The witness affirmed that Luis Cárdenas Palomino, right-hand man of the former secretary and main co-defendant in the case in the United States, told him in a meeting in the so-called SSP bunker that he "was on the wrong side" in the dispute between the two organizations, by favoring to the faction of Arturo Beltrán Leyva.

“He told us that El Chapo was the one we should support,” he said in Brooklyn court.

Veytia, sentenced in 2019 to more than 20 years in prison in the United States for drug trafficking, was one of the most anticipated cooperating witnesses in the trial.

El Diablo said that the order to protect El Chapo came from the then governor of Nayarit, Ney González (2005-2011).

The witness narrated that the instruction was given after two agents were kidnapped, which sparked a scandal in the State.

“I was summoned by his escort to board his vehicle, a white Tahoe,” he recounted.

"That's when he told me if he knew why this was happening to me and who he had to talk to," he continued.

"I just came from a very important meeting in Mexico City with Felipe Calderón and Genaro García Luna where they told us that the line was El Chapo," settled the convict, dressed in a brown uniform from the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center,

Information in development

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