The previous high Mexican safety official was convicted Tuesday of taking huge bribes to guard the violent drug cartels he was tasked with combating. Garcia Luna served in several safety posts below former presidents Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderon between 2000 and 2012. Each are political enemies of López Obrador.
“I’d say, as president of Mexico, for the nice of the nation, that hopefully he’ll do it,” López Obrador mentioned, referring to a doable sentencing deal, “in alternate for informing about whether or not he obtained orders or gave data to the previous presidents Fox and Calderon.”
López Obrador mentioned he hoped Garcia Luna would additionally present details about his relationship with U.S. authorities, who he mentioned will need to have identified about his corruption.
“He even obtained prizes from U.S. authorities, it’s not doable they didn’t know,” he mentioned.
López Obrador welcomed the U.S. verdict on Garcia Luna, and depicted it as alternative to root out corruption.
However López Obrador fought tooth and nail to keep away from a U.S. trial of former protection secretary Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos on related expenses in 2020, at one level threatening to kick DEA brokers out of Mexico except the final was returned, which he was. Cienfuegos was shortly freed as soon as he returned.
And López Obrador railed towards Mexican judges who dominated Tuesday towards Mexican authorities efforts to freeze the accounts of Garcia Luna’s spouse, Linda Pereyra Gálvez. The federal government blocked her accounts in 2019, when her husband was arrested in Texas.
Nevertheless, judges later dominated the freezing of the accounts violated her rights.
“As now we have been saying, the judicial department in our nation wants a profound reform,” López Obrador mentioned.
The Mexican president has often sparred with the judiciary, as a result of judges have usually blocked his initiatives on constitutional grounds.
García Luna, 54, was convicted on expenses that embrace participating in a unbroken felony enterprise. He faces no less than 20 years and as a lot as life in jail at his sentencing, set for June 27.
García Luna, who denied the allegations, headed Mexico’s federal police and was later the nation’s high public security official from 2006 to 2012 in Calderon’s administration. His attorneys mentioned the fees had been primarily based on lies from criminals who wished to punish his drug-fighting efforts and to get sentencing breaks for themselves by serving to prosecutors.
On Tuesday, Calderon mentioned Garcia Luna’s conviction didn’t diminish his administration’s coverage of combating drug cartels.
“I by no means negotiated or agreed with criminals,” Calderon wrote in an announcement.
Rubén Salazar, director of the Mexican political evaluation agency Etellekt Consultores, mentioned García Luna’s conviction has rocked Mexico’s political world by underlining the chance that the U.S. justice system may open instances towards high-profile Mexican politicians.
“Your complete political class is trembling proper now,” Salazar mentioned. “It isn’t a trial towards García Luna, however towards Mexican narco-politics.”