Mexico says 18 security officials ousted

MEXICO CITY — Top directors in Mexico’s National Guard and elsewhere in the state security apparatus have been purged due to their ties to a former security secretary now held on drug trafficking charges in the United States.

Current Security Secretary Alfonso Durazo said Tuesday that two general directors from the National Guard, as well as officials from the penitentiary system and the National Intelligence Center, have been relieved of their duties. In total, some 18 officials have been removed in recent months because of their ties to Genaro Garcia Luna, he said.

“They are positions of trust; consequently, they can be removed from responsibility precisely due to the loss of trust,” Durazo said.

U.S. prosecutors say Garcia Luna took tens of millions of dollars in bribes to protect Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman’s Sinaloa cartel. Garcia Luna, who is awaiting trial in New York, has denied the allegations.

Garcia Luna led Mexico’s Federal Investigation Agency from 2001 to 2005. From 2006 to 2012, he served as Mexico’s secretary of public security before relocating to the U.S. He was arrested in December in Texas.

Last week, U.S. prosecutors announced charges against two other former high-ranking Mexican security officials also accused of accepting millions of dollars in bribes from the Sinaloa cartel.

Former Federal Police commanders Luis Cardenas Palomino and Ramon Pequeno Garcia had not been arrested.