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This was reported this Thursday by the Mexican Foreign Minister, without specifying reasons, although media from both countries indicated that the DEA requested his capture and that he was investigated for drug trafficking.
“Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda, has been detained at the Los Angeles Airport, California,” wrote the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Mexico, Marcelo Ebrard, on Twitter.
The chancellor said that in the “next few hours” the Los Angeles consulate will inform you of the charges for which you were detained. “We will offer the consular assistance to which you are entitled,” he concluded.
The Mexican press reported that Cienfuegos, 72, He was detained by the US authorities upon arriving in that country on a trip with his family.
Ebrard did not give details about the reasons for the arrest and the Mexican prosecutor’s office did not respond to requests for information on whether Cienfuegos, a retired army general, had an investigation against him in Mexico or the United States.
The American newspaper The Wall Street Journal reported on its website that the former minister “was arrested (…) at the request of the Drug Enforcement Administration“And cited” senior Mexican officials “as a source.
The Mexican research journal Proceso revealed, for its part, that the capture was “the result of an investigation of corruption by drug trafficking that the United States Department of Justice had been carrying out for a few years.
If confirmed, It would be the second high-ranking Mexican military officer to be arrested on accusations of ties to drug trafficking, after General Jesús Gutiérrez Rebollo was captured and sentenced to 40 years in prison in Mexico in 1997.
According to Proceso, which cites sources from the United States Department of Justice, “at least 10 years ago, before Cienfuegos took over as head of the Secretary of Defense,” his steps were investigated in that country under “Operation Godfather”.
Other “high command of the Mexican army” also began to be investigated when the United States justice “began to collect evidence to substantiate the drug trafficking cases against Joaquín ‘Chapo’ Guzmán Loera“Process pointed out on its website.
‘El Chapo’, one of the leaders of the Sinaloa cartel, was extradited to the United States in 2017, where he was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Cienfuegos was at the head of the Defense Secretariat during the government of President Enrique Peña Nieto, of the once hegemonic Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). His arrest in the United States is the second of a former member of that administration.
Former Mexican Public Safety Secretary Genaro García Luna, accused of conspiracy to traffic at least 53 tons of cocaine to the United States, was arrested in Dallas, Texas, in December 2019 and is currently incarcerated in New York.
And Peña Nieto himself faces accusations of corruption.
Salvador Cienfuegos’ military career
During the Peña Nieto government, some members of the armed forces were accused by international human rights organizations of forced disappearance and omission in the case of the disappearance of 43 students from Ayotzinapa, Guerrero (southeast), in September 2014.
Since December 2006, at the beginning of the presidency of Felipe Calderón, the Mexican government has involved the army more in the war on drugs. Their participation, according to organizations such as Amnesty International, has unleashed a spiral of violence that is not yet contained.
Since then more than 296,000 murders have been registered in Mexico, according to official figures.
When he was Secretary of Defense, Cienfuegos even declared that he opposed the active participation of the military forces in internal security, due to the lack of a legal framework to support them.
Hundred fires joined the Army in 1964, and obtained recognitions upon completing the master’s degree in Military Administration for National Security and Defense at the College of National Defense.
He also held the positions of Senior Officer of the Secretariat of National Defense, Inspector and Controller General of the Army and Air Force and Commander of the VII Military Region, in the state of Chiapas, southeast.
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