Mexico's ex-top security official found guilty of taking bribes

NEW YORK >> Genaro Garcia Luna, once the architect and public face of Mexico's bloody war on its powerful criminal groups, was convicted Tuesday in a New York courtroom of betraying his country and colleagues by taking millions of dollars in bribes from the violent drug cartels he was meant to be pursuing.

The guilty verdict, which came after three days of deliberation in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, represented a stunning downfall for Garcia Luna, a jut-jawed former law-enforcement officer who was so enmeshed in his country's security establishment that he was often described as the J. Edgar Hoover of Mexico.

As Judge Brian M. Cogan read the verdict, Garcia Luna sat still and stony with his lawyers.

The jury reached its decision after hearing testimony from a half-dozen seasoned narco-traffickers. Jurors determined that Garcia Luna had led a double life and was secretly on the payroll of Mexico's biggest crime group, the Sinaloa drug cartel, nearly the entire time he ran the country's equivalent of the FBI and then served as its public security secretary, a powerful Cabinet-level post.

Mexicans have long suspected that government officials at the highest levels of power have been in league with the very gangsters who for decades have inflicted pain and suffering on their country, which despite billions of dollars and decades of efforts by law enforcement has reached new levels of violence in recent years.

Speaking to reporters outside the courthouse, Cesar de Castro, Garcia Luna's lead lawyer, said he was disappointed by the verdict.