Leader says U.S. falsified drug case against general

MEXICO CITY — One day after Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office announced it was dropping the drug trafficking case against its former defense secretary, Mexico President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Friday that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration had “fabricated” the accusations against retired Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos.

Lopez Obrador suggested there could have been political motivations behind U.S. authorities’ arrest of Cienfuegos at Los Angeles International Airport in October, noting that the investigation had been ongoing for years, but the arrest came shortly before U.S. presidential elections.

The president said Mexican prosecutors had dropped the case because the evidence shared by the United States did not prove he committed any crime.

In a statement Thursday night, the Mexican Attorney General’s Office went beyond just announcing it was closing the case. Its statement cleared the general entirely. It said Cienfuegos had not been found to have any illicit or abnormal income, nor was any evidence found “that he had issued any order to favor the criminal group in question.”

Lopez Obrador has given the military more responsibility and power than any president in recent history, relying on it to build massive infrastructure projects and most recently to distribute the COVID19 vaccine, in addition to its expanded security responsibilities.

Cienfuegos was arrested in Los Angeles in October, after he was secretly indicted by a federal grand jury in New York in 2019. He was accused of conspiring with the H2 cartel in Mexico to smuggle thousands of kilos of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana while he was defense secretary from 2012 to 2018.

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

Under the pressure of Mexico’s implicit threats to restrict or expel U.S. agents, U.S. prosecutors dropped their case so Cienfuegos could be returned to Mexico and investigated under Mexican law.

Mike Vigil, the Drug Enforcement Administration’s former chief of international operations, said clearing Cienfuegos “could be the straw that broke the camel’s back as far as U.S.Mexico cooperation in counterdrug activities.”