International
Mexico gripped by ex-security chief’s US drugs trial

January 27 | By AFP | Samir Tounsi |
Mexico is on tenterhooks awaiting fresh revelations from the US trial of former security chief Genaro Garcia Luna, accused of receiving vast sums of money to allow the notorious Sinaloa cartel to smuggle cocaine.
The trial of Garcia Luna, who was Mexico’s public security minister from 2006 to 2012, began on Monday at the same New York court that handed convicted drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman a life sentence in 2019.
The prosecution’s first witness, an ex-police officer who later worked for Guzman’s Sinaloa cartel, said he had witnessed former gang boss Arturo Beltran Leyva, who was killed in 2009, give bribes to Garcia Luna.
“He was paid until Beltran’s last day,” Sergio Villarreal Barragan said in Spanish.
In exchange for money, Garcia Luna provided information about police operations, Villarreal Barragan testified — claims denied by lawyers for the 54-year-old ex-minister, who has pleaded not guilty.
Mexican media have given blow-by-blow accounts of the proceedings, while President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has promised daily updates at his morning news conferences.
Lopez Obrador called the allegations “shameful,” while his government is seeking to recover $700 million allegedly embezzled by Garcia Luna.
A lawsuit was filed on September 21, 2021 in Florida against 39 companies belonging to Garcia Luna or his relatives.
The objective is “to return to Mexico all the property that exists in the name of Genaro Garcia Luna in Florida,” Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said.
Lopez Obrador, who took office in 2018, suggested three hypotheses on the situation surrounding Garcia Luna:
First, if he’s innocent, he must be released “even if it’s a fiasco” for the United States.
The second possibility is that Garcia Luna acted alone, deceiving Mexican authorities including former president Felipe Calderon (2006-12).
Lopez Obrador’s third conjecture is that Garcia Luna may have acted with a “green light” from Calderon as well as former president Vicente Fox (2000-06).
A left-wing populist, Lopez Obrador regularly accuses his “conservative” predecessors of corruption, and even organized a referendum in 2021 on whether former presidents should be prosecuted for graft.
The poll’s result in favor was non-binding due to low turnout.
US cooperation
Garcia Luna, who was arrested in December 2019 in Texas, was Washington’s interlocutor when he was Calderon’s security chief.
Meeting then-secretary of state Hillary Clinton in 2009 as the neighboring countries launched a joint initiative to fight cross-border organized crime, the pair were all smiles as they shook hands in front of the cameras.
As the boss of the police, the former minister was a pivotal player in the war against drug cartels launched by Calderon in 2006.
At the time, the super-cop was already allegedly profiting from his influence with “El Chapo,” US authorities charged in 2020.
“From 2001 to 2012, while occupying high-ranking law enforcement positions in the Mexican government, Garcia Luna received millions of dollars in bribes from the Sinaloa Cartel in exchange for providing protection for its drug trafficking activities,” the Justice Department said.
Before becoming a government minister, Garcia Luna, an engineer by training, headed Mexico’s since-renamed Federal Investigation Agency, a branch of the police.
Hailing from a modest district of Mexico City, Garcia Luna entered the security services at the age of 21.
It was there that Garcia Luna, known for always being elegantly dressed, met his wife, an intelligence analyst.
According to journalist Francisco Cruz, who wrote a book about the ex-security chief, Garcia Luna sought to model himself on the late American J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI’s first director who served for nearly a half-century.
The nature of his work meant that Garcia Luna crossed paths with US security agencies, whose presence in Mexico is an open secret.
“We had a close relationship with him on the themes of crime and drug trafficking,” said Mike Vigil, a retired chief of international operations at the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
The trial is expected to last several weeks and if convicted, Garcia Luna could face up to life in prison.
International
China shows at the UN its “condemnation” of Israel for the “violation of Iran’s sovereignty”

The Chinese ambassador to the United Nations, Fu Cong, showed the “condemnation” of his country against the “violation of the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of Iran” after the air attack launched by Israel against multiple targets in that country, the official newspaper Diario del Pueblo reports this Saturday.
That media echoes Fu’s speech to the UN Security Council on Friday, in which he demanded that Israel “immediately stop all its military actions.”
“China (…) opposes the expansion of conflicts, and is deeply concerned about the serious consequences that may arise from Israel’s actions. The intensification of regional tensions does not interest any of the parties involved,” said the Chinese emissary.
Beijing called on Tel Aviv and Tehran to “resolve their disputes through political and diplomatic means, and maintain peace and stability at the regional level jointly.”
In Fu’s view, the Israeli attack will have a “negative impact” on the negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program: “China has always been committed to the peaceful resolution of the Iranian nuclear issue through dialogue and consultations, and opposes the use of force, illegal unilateral sanctions and armed attacks on peaceful nuclear facilities.”
This Friday, China had already expressed its willingness to “play a constructive role” to curb the escalation of tensions and facilitate conciliation, in line with its traditional position of active neutrality in the region’s conflicts.
The Israeli attack, which according to Tehran caused dozens of deaths, including senior military commanders and at least six nuclear scientists, targeted key facilities such as the uranium enrichment plant in Natanz. Numerous civilian casualties were also reported.
Israel justified the offensive by claiming that the Iranian regime is secretly developing a program to manufacture nuclear weapons.
For his part, Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, promised a “severe response” and assured that the attack would reveal the “evil nature” of Israel.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres also expressed concern about the bombing, at a time when Iran and the US The United States is holding talks about the Iranian nuclear program.
International
Donald Trump’s government pauses its program of indiscriminate raides against migrants

The government of US President Donald Trump has decided to pause its campaign of discretionary roundings against migrants in certain areas due to its apparent concern about the growing unpopularity of these methods, according to The New York Times newspaper on Friday.
According to an email to which the newspaper has had access and the confirmation of US officials, the Executive has ordered the Immigration and Customs Control Service (ICE) to pause the beatings that affect the agricultural industry and the hospitality industry.
The spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, Tricia McLaughlin, confirmed in a statement that “the president’s instructions” will be obeyed and the portfolio will also continue to “work to get the worst illegal foreign criminals out of the streets of the United States.”
The decision points out that this campaign of discretionary arrests to try to deport large-scale immigrants is harming industries and electoral constituencies whose support Trump wants to retain for next year’s legislative elections.
The new instructions were transmitted to ICE in an email sent last Thursday asking that “all investigations/law enforcement operations be suspended in work centers in the agricultural sector (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and hotels.”
These new guidelines come in turn after more than a week of intense protests in Los Angeles against this immigration policy and that Trump himself admitted that the raids seem to be affecting the agricultural sector, which in states like California, where beatings have intensified, depend almost exclusively on immigrant labor.
Since his return to the White House in January, Trump has implemented an aggressive policy of hard hand against immigration and as a sample of his Cabinet officials recently held a meeting with the ICE leadership to order them to carry out 3,000 arrests a day, a mandate that seems to be behind the intensification of the raids.
International
Trump says he knew “everything” about the attack on Iran and assures that the dialogue remains open

US President Donald Trump said on Friday that Washington “known everything” about the Israeli attack on Iran and that the dialogue on Tehran’s nuclear program “is not dead.”
“We knew everything and I tried to avoid Iran all this humiliation and death. I tried hard to avoid it because I would have loved to see an agreement,” Trump said in an interview with Reuters.
The US president insisted on what he wrote today about the attack on social networks, where he said he gave an ultimatum of 60 days to Tehran to reach an agreement.
“We knew practically everything. We knew enough to give Iran 60 days to reach an agreement and today it is already 61 days,” he explained in the interview, in which he said he did not know what the current situation of the Iranian nuclear program is after the attack launched by Israel, which also ended the lives of key military leaders of the Persian country.
Regarding the dialogue between the US and Iran about the nuclear program of the ayatollahs, Trump assured that “he is not dead”, that “an agreement is still possible” and also recalled that on Sunday a sixth round of dialogue is scheduled in Muscat (Oman) that they consider is now in the air.
“We have a meeting with them on Sunday. Now, I’m not sure if that meeting will take place, but we have a meeting with them on Sunday,” he said.
The United States and Iran have held five rounds of talks on the Iranian nuclear program since April, with Washington demanding that Tehran discard its capabilities both to manufacture an atomic bomb and to enrich uranium, something that the ayatollahs considered unacceptable.
Both Israel and Trump himself had warned of possible preventive attacks on the Persian country due to this refusal by Iran.
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