AMLO Claims US Evidence Against Gen. Cienfuegos was Fabricated

[Judi Lynn]

By Socalj 4/11/2023 02:54:00 PM

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador hypothesized that the United States investigation against the former Secretary of Public Security, Genaro García Luna, and the former Secretary of National Defense, Salvador Cienfuegos, is totally different because the latter case could be the revenge of United States agencies because the Mexican Army did not allow itself to be infiltrated like the Navy in Mexico.

He explained that in the case of Cienfuegos, the United States sent them the entire file "and our attention was drawn to the fact that it was fabricated, that there was no evidence."

– How did they know, if a trial was not carried out to find out if, in fact, that evidence was real?

"Ah, of course," replied the president. "It was a five-year investigation in the United States and here in two months it was determined that it was not," he insisted.

"No, but it is that since a high-level official arrives, it is very likely that the agencies in the United States will open a file, be it the CIA, or the DEA. Because it is a way of control and submission, it is that they could use that as revenge" he answered.

More:
http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2023/04/amlo-claims-us-evidence-against-gen.html

[Judi Lynn]

1. US-Trained Death Squads?

JULY/AUGUST 2009 ISSUE

How America’s latest drug war initiative could aid the cartels and enrich military contractors.

FRANK KOUGHAN


OFFICIALLY, IT’S CALLED the Mérida Initiative, but critics have another name for the three-year, $1.4 billion plan to fight the drug war, unveiled by George W. Bush and Mexican president Felipe Calderón in 2007. They’ve dubbed it Plan Mexico, a reference to Plan Colombia, the controversial US-funded drug eradication effort; under the $6 billion (and counting) program, the production of Colombian cocaine has actually increased. Critics say Mérida is destined to be just as ineffective and may contribute to rampant human rights abuses by Mexican authorities, and provide US military training to soldiers notorious for ending up on the payrolls of the cartels.

Though the plan does direct some funds toward reforming Mexico’s corrupt justice system, the bulk of the money is slated for military training and hardware—equipment ranging from surveillance planes and Black Hawk helicopters to ion scanners and X-ray vans (to see inside other vehicles). By law, all of the funds must be spent by the US government, in the US, on US suppliers and contractors—a fact not lost on the private sector. Almost none of the money has been disbursed yet, but DynCorp International, the Virginia-based military contractor with a history of controversy in Colombia and Iraq, has already begun advertising for a Mérida Initiative “Program Director.”

Mexicans are already wary of private security contractors. Last July, videos surfaced showing security consultants training members of an elite Mexican police unit in what appeared to be torture techniques. (Officers are seen squirting water up a man’s nose and forcing a trainee to roll through his own vomit.)

Since Calderón mobilized the military against the cartels in December 2006, complaints to the Mexican National Commission of Human Rights have skyrocketed, from 182 in 2006 to 1,230 in 2008. “There’s a very clear correlation between the increased deployment of the military and increased human rights violations,” says Stephanie Brewer of the Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez Human Rights Center in Mexico City. Allegations have included rape, sexual abuse, torture, and, in 28 cases, murder. In 2007, two women and three children died in a hail of bullets when they failed to stop at a checkpoint in Sinaloa. “The soldiers’ response, given their military training, was to fire on the vehicle,” says Maureen Meyer of the Washington Office on Latin America. “Police and the military are not interchangeable. Mexican armed forces should not be involved in anti-drug operations.”

More:
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/07/us-trained-death-squads/