Who is Genaro García Luna, the highest former Mexican official tried in the United States, accused of

With grayer hair and dressed as a civilian in a dark suit, gray tie and white shirt, the former official went to the Court on Tuesday to witness with a serious face the beginning of the formation of the members of the jury.

He is accused of accepting million dollars in bribes from the group led by andl Shorty for carry cocaine a USA while occupying high security positions, especially that of Secretary of Public Safety in the government of Felipe Calderón between 2006 and 2012.

He also faces charges for organized crime and for lying to US authorities.

If the accusations are proven, it could happen between ten years and the rest of his life in prison.

The sentence, after a trial that is expected to last weeks, will determine the extent to which organized crime infiltrated the pinnacle of Mexican power during one of the bloodiest periods of the war between the state and drug traffickers.

An engineer by training, García Luna was recruited in 1989 as an investigator for the disappeared Homeland Security and Investigation Center (Cisen), the Intelligence area of ​​the Mexican Ministry of the Interior.

In his first years at Cisen, he was in charge of monitoring the activity of guerrilla groups active in Mexico, later specializing in combating kidnapping gangs.

His acquaintances at the time say that García Luna managed to rescue several important people, especially businessmen who years later helped him in his government career.

From Cisen he went to Federal Preventive Police and from there to Federal Investigation Agencytwo corporations that disappeared when García Luna took over the Ministry of Public Security from 2006.

It was from that position that García Luna promoted a aggressive fight against drug trafficking – known as the “war on drugs” – which included the participation of the army and which, according to some estimates, left more than 250,000 dead.

At the end of the Calderón administration in 2012, García Luna moved to the US state of Florida. He resided there until his arrest in Texas in December 2019.

The process against García Luna is interpreted as a kind of sequel to the so-called “trial of the century” against andlchapor Guzmanwhich was resolved with life imprisonment against the drug lord.

A former member of the Sinaloa cartel said during that judicial process that he had been in charge of delivering suitcases to García Luna with at least uS$6 million in cash in 2005, 2006 and 2007.

US prosecutors accuse the former Mexican official of accepting the money to facilitate the entry of tons of cocaine that the Guzmán cartel smuggled into the US between 2001 and 2012.

According to the Prosecutor’s Office, García Luna agreed not to interfere in drug shipmentsrevealing information to traffickers about enforcement operations, removing members of rival cartels, and placing other corrupt officials in positions of power.

The US government alleges that García Luna became a member of the organization in January 2001.

In total, he faces five charges: three for drug trafficking conspiracy, one for continued membership in a criminal organization and another for making false statements to US authorities when he applied for US citizenship in 2018.

The former Secretary of Security pleads not guilty of all charges.

His defense will argue that, in fact, his client was a collaborator of the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

Before the trial, García Luna starred in several controversies during his time in charge of Mexican security.

Before exploiting his case, an investigation by the Univisión channel revealed questionable ties to a private security businessman who would have benefited from the war on drugs that he launched.

But one of the most controversial situations occurred when García Luna was director of the Federal Investigation Agency.

It was December 2005 and millions of Mexicans watched on television how their agents entered a ranch in the south of Mexico City to arrest the French citizen Florence Cassez and her partner, Israel Vallarta, who confessed before the cameras to the kidnapping of three people.

It was all a setup. Cassez and Vallarta had been arrested the day before. According to García Luna, the television show was “a recreation” requested by the television stations, with which he maintained a very close relationship.

The Cassez-Vallarta case sparked a diplomatic conflict with France and, in 2013, the Mexican Supreme Court ordered the suspension of a 60-year sentence against Cassez on the grounds that the broadcast “contaminated” the trial in which she was found guilty.

García Luna was also criticized for his habit of show many detainees in the media who were later acquitted.

Civil organizations harshly denounced their use of protected witnesses in legal proceedings to try to link activists and the media with drug trafficking gangs.

However, nothing has weighed more on his resume than the high number of deaths left by the bloody fight against drug trafficking that he led, considered unsuccessful and counterproductive by many experts.

By Marcos González Díaz, BBC News Mundo correspondent in Mexico

After the unexpected release of former Secretary of Defense Salvador Cienfuegos -who had been arrested in the United States in 2020 for alleged links to drug trafficking-, the trial of García Luna will mean seeing the highest-ranking former Mexican official in the dock until the date.

It will be in the same court and with the same judge in New York that sentenced El Chapo five months before García Luna was arrested, precisely for allegedly cooperating with the Sinaloa cartel that one day led Joaquín Guzmán.

For all this, the expectationactive for this kind of second part of that historic trial is maximum. But, above all, it once again demonstrates the determining role that the US is playing against Mexico when it comes to applying justice to those responsible for Mexican drug trafficking.

After the life sentence applied to Chapo -who on Tuesday sent a message to López Obrador asking for help to return to a prison in Mexico-, a hypothetical conviction of García Luna would now mean the confirmation of an open secret: the almost inevitable collaboration between some Mexican authorities with the cartels so they can operate their multi-million dollar business.

And, also as in that trial against El Chapo, there is enormous interest in knowing what other personalities could be pointed out and implicated during the statements that are heard during a judicial process that is expected to be explosive.

At the moment, the person on whom many of the eyes turn, former President Calderón -who has always denied knowing any type of connection between García Luna and drug trafficking-, seems very calm: days before the start of the trial this Tuesday , was recorded in Spain singing with mariachis a song by Vicente Fernández titled, precisely, “On Tuesday they shoot me.”

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