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US Dropping Case Against Former Mexican Defense Secretary

Associated Press

   The U.S. Justice Department is dropping its drug trafficking and money
   laundering case against former Mexican defense secretary Gen. Salvador
   Cienfuegos, Attorney General William Barr said Tuesday.

   Barr said the department would drop its case so Cienfuegos "may be
   investigated and, if appropriate, charged, under Mexican law."
   Cienfuegos, who was charged in federal court in Brooklyn, was arrested
   in Los Angeles last month.

   Cienfuegos, who led Mexico's army for six years under ex-President
   Enrique Peña Nieto, was the highest-ranking former Cabinet official
   arrested since the top Mexican security official Genaro Garcia Luna was
   arrested in Texas in 2019.

   Cienfuegos was indicted by a federal grand jury in New York in 2019 and
   accused of conspiring to participate in an international drug
   distribution and money laundering scheme. Prosecutors alleged he helped
   the H-2 cartel smuggle thousands of kilos of cocaine, heroin,
   methamphetamine and marijuana while he was defense secretary from 2012
   to 2018.

   Prosecutors said intercepted messages showed Cienfuegos worked to
   ensure that the military did not take action against the cartel and
   that operations were initiated against rivals in exchange for bribes.
   He was also accused of introducing cartel leaders to other corrupt
   Mexican officials.

   In court papers last month, U.S. prosecutors had argued Cienfuegos was
   a significant flight risk and said he would "likely seek to leverage
   his connections to high level H-2 Cartel members in Mexico, as well as
   former high-level corrupt government officials, to assist him in
   fleeing from U.S. law enforcement and shelter him in Mexico." Had he
   been convicted of the charges in the U.S., he would've faced at least
   10 years in federal prison.

   Under Cienfuegos, the Mexican army was accused of frequent human rights
   abuses, but that was true of both his predecessors and his successor in
   the post. The worst scandal in Cienfuegos' tenure involved the 2014
   army killings of suspects in a grain warehouse.

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