Monday, December 16, 2019
Congress holds first hearing on Haiti in six years amid political instability
ALEX DAUGHERTY. Miami Herald.
December 11, 2019
Minutes after House Democrats announced articles of impeachment on President Donald Trump on Tuesday, Rep. Frederica Wilson entered a meeting room in Washington and asked a group of Haitian activists about efforts to impeach their embattled president, Jovenel Moïse.
“We live in the United States and we have corruption ... right in our White House just like you have corruption with your president,” said Wilson, D-Miami Gardens. “What has happened to the impeachment process in Haiti?”
Emmanuela Douyon, an economist and activist with Petrochallenger and Nou Pap Dòmi anti-corruption grassroots movement, laid out a scenario that makes the allegations against Trump look minuscule in comparison.
“They voted against [impeachment],” Douyon said of the Lower House of Deputies in the Haitian Parliament that is controlled by the executive. “Parliament members received money for their vote. There is a corrupt Parliament where the majority allies with the president and they are taking money from the president and their party to vote when he needed their support.”
This was the same legislative body that jettisoned the prime minister in March, leaving Haiti without a legitimate government since.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee held its first hearing on Haiti in six years amid ongoing political instability and widespread anti-government protests calling for Moïse to step down. Wilson, who is not a member of the committee but represents one of the largest Haitian communities in the United States, said she pressured the committee to hold the hearing.
“We have basically put Haiti on the back burner for too long,” Wilson said. “There’s apathy in the United States, there’s apathy in Haiti. Now, we have to put Haiti in the conversation of this committee. I am the genesis of this committee hearing because I said you got to have a hearing on Haiti.”
Wilson also organized a roundtable on Haiti with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in October, where prominent Haitian-American leaders said the U.S. should stop meddling in Haiti and Moïse should go.
Tuesday’s hearing was attended by three Republicans and 11 Democrats. Four Democrats, Reps. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., Barbara Lee, D-Calif., Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., and Wilson attended the hearing and asked questions even though they are not members of the Foreign Affairs Committee, which is rare.
The lawmakers searched for a solution to the crisis, which deepened after last year’s ill-timed fuel hike in July, and in mid-September led to a countrywide lockdown that lasted for 12 weeks. Schools, businesses, banks and the court system were all shuttered. Businesses went bankrupt, and a hunger crisis ensued with roads still closed in some parts of the country.
Waters, in particular, harshly criticized U.S. policy toward Haiti, arguing that Moïse is among a list of current and past government officials implicated in a corruption report on how $2 billion in savings from Venezuela’s Petrocaribe oil program was stolen, instead of invested to help the country’s poor after the devastating 2010 earthquake.
The U.S., she said, “is holding up” Moïse’s government.
“Our position in supporting this president is not a good position,” Waters said. “It is a failed position.”
The five witnesses and audience, which included dozens of Haitian activists, agreed.
There also was no representative of the Haitian government there to defend Moïse, who has dismissed corruption allegations and repeatedly said he is not resigning. Moïse has proposed the creation of a unity government but the opposition has rejected all calls to dialogue and negotiate on the formation of a new government.
Pierre Esperance, the executive director of the Haitian National Human Rights Network, said Moïse uses armed gangs to combat political dissent. Esperance said the government’s actions have led to the deaths of 187 protesters since July 2018, with 42 of them shot execution-style. Additionally, 44 police officers and two journalists were killed this year.
“These armed gangs bolster the political interests of their protectors by attacking the population, especially in neighborhoods known as strongholds of political opposition that support anti-government demonstrations,” Esperance said. “Armed gangs, with the protection of government authorities, have carried out five massacres over the course of President Moïse’s administration.”
One of those massacres happened in the La Saline neighborhood in November 2018. Several members of Congress wanted to know if anyone, including two individuals appointed to their posts by Moïse, had been prosecuted. None has, Esperance answered.
He also told committee members, when asked about perceptions of the U.S. in Haiti, that the embassy had until earlier this year given unconditional support to Moïse, and most recently had used pressure tactics against government opponents by canceling some of their visas.
Esperance said the U.S. and other international actors need to give resources to bolster Haiti’s police force and judiciary to strengthen the rule of law. He said international efforts that focus exclusively on administering elections or giving out food won’t help Haiti in the long run, a critique of U.S. foreign aid efforts in the country.
“This obsession with the electoral process, one man, one vote elections, has created a cottage industry of bogus parties that come up and that attract not the most civic-minded people to come and run,” said Leonie Hermantin, a Haitian American community activist who splits her time between Miami and Port-au-Prince. “The idea that you have elections and that is proof democracy is healthy in Haiti, is not really accurate.”
Daniel Erikson, a former special adviser for Latin America under Vice President Joe Biden, said the State Department should form a comprehensive strategy for helping Haiti get out of its current crisis, which also includes a deepening economic malaise, by working with international partners like Canada, the European Union and the Organization of American States.
“If the U.S. does not lead, no one else will step up to take our place,” Erickson said. “I believe the time is right to choose new approaches. As we turn to 2020...Haiti must be a more central role on the U.S. foreign policy agenda.”
Erikson also said the U.S. should ensure that any foreign aid does not end up in the hands of Haiti’s newly remounted army or paramilitary groups and that Temporary Protected Status, a program that allows Haitians in the U.S. to temporarily live and work without the potential for deportation, should be extended past its 2021 end date.
“What Haiti really needs is a functioning Haitian national police and judicial system,” Erikson said.
He and all of the other speakers agreed that the solution is not the return of the United Nations’ blue-helmet peacekeeping force that recently ended its mission after 15 years.
Officials from the State Department and USAID were not present at Tuesday’s hearing, and Wilson said she wants more hearings where Trump administration officials can explain how they plan to get international cooperation for stabilizing Haiti.
“We need to get the State Department here so they can get international buy-in to what’s happening in Haiti,” Wilson said. “We can no longer pretend that Haiti does not exist and that Haiti is not in crisis. Haiti is in crisis. Haiti is just a couple of hundred miles from the U.S. border, specifically Florida.”
Minutes after House Democrats announced articles of impeachment on President Donald Trump on Tuesday, Rep. Frederica Wilson entered a meeting room in Washington and asked a group of Haitian activists about efforts to impeach their embattled president, Jovenel Moïse.
“We live in the United States and we have corruption ... right in our White House just like you have corruption with your president,” said Wilson, D-Miami Gardens. “What has happened to the impeachment process in Haiti?”
Emmanuela Douyon, an economist and activist with Petrochallenger and Nou Pap Dòmi anti-corruption grassroots movement, laid out a scenario that makes the allegations against Trump look minuscule in comparison.
“They voted against [impeachment],” Douyon said of the Lower House of Deputies in the Haitian Parliament that is controlled by the executive. “Parliament members received money for their vote. There is a corrupt Parliament where the majority allies with the president and they are taking money from the president and their party to vote when he needed their support.”
This was the same legislative body that jettisoned the prime minister in March, leaving Haiti without a legitimate government since.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee held its first hearing on Haiti in six years amid ongoing political instability and widespread anti-government protests calling for Moïse to step down. Wilson, who is not a member of the committee but represents one of the largest Haitian communities in the United States, said she pressured the committee to hold the hearing.
“We have basically put Haiti on the back burner for too long,” Wilson said. “There’s apathy in the United States, there’s apathy in Haiti. Now, we have to put Haiti in the conversation of this committee. I am the genesis of this committee hearing because I said you got to have a hearing on Haiti.”
Wilson also organized a roundtable on Haiti with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in October, where prominent Haitian-American leaders said the U.S. should stop meddling in Haiti and Moïse should go.
Tuesday’s hearing was attended by three Republicans and 11 Democrats. Four Democrats, Reps. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., Barbara Lee, D-Calif., Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., and Wilson attended the hearing and asked questions even though they are not members of the Foreign Affairs Committee, which is rare.
The lawmakers searched for a solution to the crisis, which deepened after last year’s ill-timed fuel hike in July, and in mid-September led to a countrywide lockdown that lasted for 12 weeks. Schools, businesses, banks and the court system were all shuttered. Businesses went bankrupt, and a hunger crisis ensued with roads still closed in some parts of the country.
Waters, in particular, harshly criticized U.S. policy toward Haiti, arguing that Moïse is among a list of current and past government officials implicated in a corruption report on how $2 billion in savings from Venezuela’s Petrocaribe oil program was stolen, instead of invested to help the country’s poor after the devastating 2010 earthquake.
The U.S., she said, “is holding up” Moïse’s government.
“Our position in supporting this president is not a good position,” Waters said. “It is a failed position.”
The five witnesses and audience, which included dozens of Haitian activists, agreed.
There also was no representative of the Haitian government there to defend Moïse, who has dismissed corruption allegations and repeatedly said he is not resigning. Moïse has proposed the creation of a unity government but the opposition has rejected all calls to dialogue and negotiate on the formation of a new government.
Pierre Esperance, the executive director of the Haitian National Human Rights Network, said Moïse uses armed gangs to combat political dissent. Esperance said the government’s actions have led to the deaths of 187 protesters since July 2018, with 42 of them shot execution-style. Additionally, 44 police officers and two journalists were killed this year.
“These armed gangs bolster the political interests of their protectors by attacking the population, especially in neighborhoods known as strongholds of political opposition that support anti-government demonstrations,” Esperance said. “Armed gangs, with the protection of government authorities, have carried out five massacres over the course of President Moïse’s administration.”
One of those massacres happened in the La Saline neighborhood in November 2018. Several members of Congress wanted to know if anyone, including two individuals appointed to their posts by Moïse, had been prosecuted. None has, Esperance answered.
He also told committee members, when asked about perceptions of the U.S. in Haiti, that the embassy had until earlier this year given unconditional support to Moïse, and most recently had used pressure tactics against government opponents by canceling some of their visas.
Esperance said the U.S. and other international actors need to give resources to bolster Haiti’s police force and judiciary to strengthen the rule of law. He said international efforts that focus exclusively on administering elections or giving out food won’t help Haiti in the long run, a critique of U.S. foreign aid efforts in the country.
“This obsession with the electoral process, one man, one vote elections, has created a cottage industry of bogus parties that come up and that attract not the most civic-minded people to come and run,” said Leonie Hermantin, a Haitian American community activist who splits her time between Miami and Port-au-Prince. “The idea that you have elections and that is proof democracy is healthy in Haiti, is not really accurate.”
Daniel Erikson, a former special adviser for Latin America under Vice President Joe Biden, said the State Department should form a comprehensive strategy for helping Haiti get out of its current crisis, which also includes a deepening economic malaise, by working with international partners like Canada, the European Union and the Organization of American States.
“If the U.S. does not lead, no one else will step up to take our place,” Erickson said. “I believe the time is right to choose new approaches. As we turn to 2020...Haiti must be a more central role on the U.S. foreign policy agenda.”
Erikson also said the U.S. should ensure that any foreign aid does not end up in the hands of Haiti’s newly remounted army or paramilitary groups and that Temporary Protected Status, a program that allows Haitians in the U.S. to temporarily live and work without the potential for deportation, should be extended past its 2021 end date.
“What Haiti really needs is a functioning Haitian national police and judicial system,” Erikson said.
He and all of the other speakers agreed that the solution is not the return of the United Nations’ blue-helmet peacekeeping force that recently ended its mission after 15 years.
Officials from the State Department and USAID were not present at Tuesday’s hearing, and Wilson said she wants more hearings where Trump administration officials can explain how they plan to get international cooperation for stabilizing Haiti.
“We need to get the State Department here so they can get international buy-in to what’s happening in Haiti,” Wilson said. “We can no longer pretend that Haiti does not exist and that Haiti is not in crisis. Haiti is in crisis. Haiti is just a couple of hundred miles from the U.S. border, specifically Florida.”
Critics say Guatemala commission undermining anti-graft push
SONIA PÉREZ D. AP. December
13, 2019
GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — One by one, witnesses sat in the elegant wooden chair in Guatemala’s Congress in recent weeks to air their grievances against the U.N.-sponsored anti-graft commission that over the course of 12 years helped bring to justice hundreds of politicians, businesspeople, judges and others accused of corruption.
They have included relatives of a suspect complaining about a preventive prison order, even though he has been a fugitive from justice for six years, and allies of a man convicted of crimes against humanity during Guatemala’s bloody 1960-1996 civil war, a case in which the U.N. commission, known as Cicig for its initials in Spanish, was not even involved.
Cicig won plaudits at home and abroad for its work, hand-in-hand with Guatemalan prosecutors, to bring corruption cases against hundreds of the country’s powerful and privileged, including two ex-presidents and then-sitting President Otto Pérez Molina, who remains behind bars. But after its investigations touched the inner circle of current President Jimmy Morales and the president himself, he shut the commission down and it ceased functioning Sept. 3, when its mandate ran out without being renewed.
Human rights groups warned at the time of a possible backlash against those who carried out the corruption investigations, and those worries appear to have been born out in the congressional Truth Commission launched days later, tasked with compiling a report on Cicig’s activities. Critics say it seeks to discredit and undermine the commission’s work and derail ongoing prosecutions even as many of Cicig’s most high-profile investigations are set to see trial in 2020. And they fear it could be used to bring charges against investigators, judges and prosecutors whose efforts put the bigwigs behind bars.
Juan Ramón Lau, the congressman presiding over the commission, said it has heard from more than 20 people who say they were victimized by Cicig and about 40 are expected to appear before it wraps up. He defended the commission, saying its mission is for “the truth to be known about what Cicig did.”
But Iván Velásquez, a Colombian lawyer who led Cicig for years, argued that the body violates the principle of separation of powers and “constitutes an illegal interference by the legislative branch” into independent entities.
“The ultimate goal of the commission ... is to disrupt the (legal) cases that are under way,” Velásquez said.
U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said Secretary-General Antonio Guterres believes Cicig “made a decisive contribution to strengthen the rule of law as well as strengthen investigation and prosecution capacities in Guatemala over its 12 years of operation.”
He added that Guterres thanked Cicig workers for “their professionalism and commitment to assist in the cause of justice. He also trusts that efforts to fight impunity will continue” in Guatemala.
After the Supreme Court ruled an initial congressional vote to establish a Truth Commission unconstitutional, congressional President Álvaro Arzú Escobar sidestepped that decision and set up the commission unilaterally. Arzú is the son of a deceased former president who was accused of corruption by Cicig, and a number of other lawmakers are themselves linked to graft cases.
One of the first to testify to the commission was Erwin Sperisen, a Guatemalan-Swiss dual national and former police chief accused of the extrajudicial killings of seven prisoners in 2006. He subsequently fled to Switzerland, where he was arrested, tried and convicted, in part on evidence provided by Cicig.
In a video call from Switzerland, Sperisen told Guatemalan lawmakers that “the truth was twisted” in his case and proclaimed his innocence. Days later the Swiss courts upheld his 15-year prison sentence for the killings.
Asked about the credibility of some of the testimonies, Lau said the commission will hear from anyone who feels aggrieved by Cicig.
He said the case he found most impactful was that of Jesús Oliva, a doctor who sat on the Social Security Institute’s board of directors and was accused of participating in the irregular awarding of a $16 million medicine contract. He died by suicide behind bars.
Oliva’s relatives testified that he had spent three years under preventive detention while suffering from diabetes and depression and had been denied house arrest or other alternatives to detention — a decision that would have been up to a judge, and not prosecutors or Cicig.
Lau said Olivia suffered behind bars and was effectively subjected to an “anticipated conviction.” He also argued that Oliva’s arrest at home by several dozens of agents was “inhuman” and constituted “excessive force.”
Lau, whose term in Congress ends in January four days before the commission is set to finish, has not been accused of corruption, but critics see him as a political operator on behalf of lawmakers who are under investigation.
Constitutional lawyer and analyst Alejandro Balsells said the commission has a “clear conflict of interest” and criticized it as a spectacle to mislead the Guatemalan people without any legal foundation whatsoever.
“The only thing it demonstrates,” Balsells said, “is the degree of absolute contempt there is for the judicial system in the country.”
GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — One by one, witnesses sat in the elegant wooden chair in Guatemala’s Congress in recent weeks to air their grievances against the U.N.-sponsored anti-graft commission that over the course of 12 years helped bring to justice hundreds of politicians, businesspeople, judges and others accused of corruption.
They have included relatives of a suspect complaining about a preventive prison order, even though he has been a fugitive from justice for six years, and allies of a man convicted of crimes against humanity during Guatemala’s bloody 1960-1996 civil war, a case in which the U.N. commission, known as Cicig for its initials in Spanish, was not even involved.
Cicig won plaudits at home and abroad for its work, hand-in-hand with Guatemalan prosecutors, to bring corruption cases against hundreds of the country’s powerful and privileged, including two ex-presidents and then-sitting President Otto Pérez Molina, who remains behind bars. But after its investigations touched the inner circle of current President Jimmy Morales and the president himself, he shut the commission down and it ceased functioning Sept. 3, when its mandate ran out without being renewed.
Human rights groups warned at the time of a possible backlash against those who carried out the corruption investigations, and those worries appear to have been born out in the congressional Truth Commission launched days later, tasked with compiling a report on Cicig’s activities. Critics say it seeks to discredit and undermine the commission’s work and derail ongoing prosecutions even as many of Cicig’s most high-profile investigations are set to see trial in 2020. And they fear it could be used to bring charges against investigators, judges and prosecutors whose efforts put the bigwigs behind bars.
Juan Ramón Lau, the congressman presiding over the commission, said it has heard from more than 20 people who say they were victimized by Cicig and about 40 are expected to appear before it wraps up. He defended the commission, saying its mission is for “the truth to be known about what Cicig did.”
But Iván Velásquez, a Colombian lawyer who led Cicig for years, argued that the body violates the principle of separation of powers and “constitutes an illegal interference by the legislative branch” into independent entities.
“The ultimate goal of the commission ... is to disrupt the (legal) cases that are under way,” Velásquez said.
U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said Secretary-General Antonio Guterres believes Cicig “made a decisive contribution to strengthen the rule of law as well as strengthen investigation and prosecution capacities in Guatemala over its 12 years of operation.”
He added that Guterres thanked Cicig workers for “their professionalism and commitment to assist in the cause of justice. He also trusts that efforts to fight impunity will continue” in Guatemala.
After the Supreme Court ruled an initial congressional vote to establish a Truth Commission unconstitutional, congressional President Álvaro Arzú Escobar sidestepped that decision and set up the commission unilaterally. Arzú is the son of a deceased former president who was accused of corruption by Cicig, and a number of other lawmakers are themselves linked to graft cases.
One of the first to testify to the commission was Erwin Sperisen, a Guatemalan-Swiss dual national and former police chief accused of the extrajudicial killings of seven prisoners in 2006. He subsequently fled to Switzerland, where he was arrested, tried and convicted, in part on evidence provided by Cicig.
In a video call from Switzerland, Sperisen told Guatemalan lawmakers that “the truth was twisted” in his case and proclaimed his innocence. Days later the Swiss courts upheld his 15-year prison sentence for the killings.
Asked about the credibility of some of the testimonies, Lau said the commission will hear from anyone who feels aggrieved by Cicig.
He said the case he found most impactful was that of Jesús Oliva, a doctor who sat on the Social Security Institute’s board of directors and was accused of participating in the irregular awarding of a $16 million medicine contract. He died by suicide behind bars.
Oliva’s relatives testified that he had spent three years under preventive detention while suffering from diabetes and depression and had been denied house arrest or other alternatives to detention — a decision that would have been up to a judge, and not prosecutors or Cicig.
Lau said Olivia suffered behind bars and was effectively subjected to an “anticipated conviction.” He also argued that Oliva’s arrest at home by several dozens of agents was “inhuman” and constituted “excessive force.”
Lau, whose term in Congress ends in January four days before the commission is set to finish, has not been accused of corruption, but critics see him as a political operator on behalf of lawmakers who are under investigation.
Constitutional lawyer and analyst Alejandro Balsells said the commission has a “clear conflict of interest” and criticized it as a spectacle to mislead the Guatemalan people without any legal foundation whatsoever.
“The only thing it demonstrates,” Balsells said, “is the degree of absolute contempt there is for the judicial system in the country.”
Honduras lawmakers urge president to shut down anti-corruption body
Gustavo Palencia. Reuters.
December 13, 2019
TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - Honduran lawmakers allied with President Juan Orlando Hernandez have voted against renewing an agreement with the Organization of American States (OAS) to extend the mandate of an anti-corruption body.
The Mission to Support the Fight against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras (MACCIH), which was formed in 2016 and has tackled public graft and illicit campaign financing, will end its term in January 2020 if Hernandez does not renew its mandate with the OAS.
On Tuesday evening, 70 lawmakers of a total of 128 in the single-chamber Congress, most of them from Hernandez’s party, voted in favor of a petition to end the mandate. The petition said MACCIH officials “violated rights, guarantees and constitutional principles.”
One complaint put forward by lawmakers is that MACCIH has revealed the names of people it is investigating while the cases are still pending, and that is has illegally obtained official documents.
The vote is non-binding. Most Hondurans support the work MACCIH is doing, according to a recent poll.
MACCIH has presented 12 corruption cases. Its work led to a 58-year prison sentence for former first lady Rosa Elena Bonilla, the wife of former President Porfirio Lobo, for fraud and misappropriation of funds.
Lobo himself is also under investigation for alleged money laundering, and lawmakers have also been investigated by the MACCIH.
TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - Honduran lawmakers allied with President Juan Orlando Hernandez have voted against renewing an agreement with the Organization of American States (OAS) to extend the mandate of an anti-corruption body.
The Mission to Support the Fight against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras (MACCIH), which was formed in 2016 and has tackled public graft and illicit campaign financing, will end its term in January 2020 if Hernandez does not renew its mandate with the OAS.
On Tuesday evening, 70 lawmakers of a total of 128 in the single-chamber Congress, most of them from Hernandez’s party, voted in favor of a petition to end the mandate. The petition said MACCIH officials “violated rights, guarantees and constitutional principles.”
One complaint put forward by lawmakers is that MACCIH has revealed the names of people it is investigating while the cases are still pending, and that is has illegally obtained official documents.
The vote is non-binding. Most Hondurans support the work MACCIH is doing, according to a recent poll.
MACCIH has presented 12 corruption cases. Its work led to a 58-year prison sentence for former first lady Rosa Elena Bonilla, the wife of former President Porfirio Lobo, for fraud and misappropriation of funds.
Lobo himself is also under investigation for alleged money laundering, and lawmakers have also been investigated by the MACCIH.
Gang of Gunmen on Motorcycles Kill Head of Honduran Prison
AP. December 13, 2019
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — A gang of gunmen on motorcycles on Friday killed Pedro Ildefonso Armas, the director of Honduras'maximum security prison.
The prison run by Armas was where a key witness against the president's brother was killed in October.
Armas was seen on a video in October talking to inmate Nery López Sanabria before a masked man opened a door and allowed a gang of prisoners to shoot and stab López Sanabria.
Notebooks belonging to López Sanabria were used in a U.S. drug trafficking trial as evidence to convict ex-congressman Antonio "Tony" Hernández, who is the younger brother of President Juan Orlando Hernandez.
López Sanabria was a former associate of Antonio Hernadez and was also known as Magdaleno Meza Fúnez. His lawyer, Carlos Chajtur, blamed the Honduran government for his death.
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — A gang of gunmen on motorcycles on Friday killed Pedro Ildefonso Armas, the director of Honduras'maximum security prison.
The prison run by Armas was where a key witness against the president's brother was killed in October.
Armas was seen on a video in October talking to inmate Nery López Sanabria before a masked man opened a door and allowed a gang of prisoners to shoot and stab López Sanabria.
Notebooks belonging to López Sanabria were used in a U.S. drug trafficking trial as evidence to convict ex-congressman Antonio "Tony" Hernández, who is the younger brother of President Juan Orlando Hernandez.
López Sanabria was a former associate of Antonio Hernadez and was also known as Magdaleno Meza Fúnez. His lawyer, Carlos Chajtur, blamed the Honduran government for his death.
Arrest of Top Crime Fighter Stuns Mexico, Where Corruption Is All Too Routine
Kirk Semple and Paulina
Villegas. New York Times. December 12, 2019
MEXICO CITY — Even in a nation almost inured to corruption, the news was astonishing.
The man considered to be the brains behind the Mexican government’s militarized war on drug traffickers stood accused by American prosecutors of having been in the pocket of one of the major criminal groups he was ostensibly pursuing, severely undermining the very fight he was helping to lead.
Genaro García Luna, Mexico’s former public security secretary, was charged with taking millions of dollars in bribes while in office to protect the Sinaloa Cartel, allowing the organization to smuggle tons of cocaine and other drugs into the United States. At the time, the group was led by Joaquín Guzmán Loera, better known as El Chapo, who is now serving a life sentence in the United States.
The indictment, unsealed in New York on Tuesday, and the subsequent arrest of Mr. García Luna in Dallas hours later, stunned Mexico. It was as if Eliot Ness had actually been an accomplice of Al Capone.
“It’s huge,” said Jaime López-Aranda, a security analyst in Mexico City who briefly worked under Mr. García Luna in the late-2000s. “I’m still a little bit in shock. And I keep thinking back to the guy and our conversations and his team and his people. It’s the sharp disappointment. I mean — my God, man. It’s like — ” He paused. “It’s like the end of an era.”
Mr. García Luna was the chief engineer of the country’s controversial counternarcotics strategy that relied heavily on the armed forces to confront criminal groups and kill or capture their leaders. Mexico is still grappling with the legacy of his approach.
While it had some success in capturing dozens of prominent crime bosses, deploying the military also spurred a sharp increase in violence and left a trail of death, as monolithic criminal enterprises were fragmented into an array of groups that have proven to be even more violent and uncontrollable.
For some Mexicans, the news of Mr. García Luna’s arrest was almost unimaginable. For others, it was proof of enduring suspicions that he had been in bed with criminals all along. Still others interpreted it as a sweeping — and scalding — referendum on the two administrations in which he served.
Then there were those who found confirmation that the whole apparatus of Mexico’s government was once and forever corrupt.
Mr. García Luna was one of the architects — and the embodiment — of Mexico’s security strategy for a decade. From 2001 to 2005, during the administration of President Vicente Fox, Mr. García Luna led the Federal Investigative Agency, Mexico’s equivalent of the F.B.I. He then became the public safety secretary in the cabinet of President Felipe Calderón from 2006 to 2012, overseeing his boss’s “war” on drug trafficking organizations and the deployment of the Mexican military to wage it.
Politically powerful, Mr. García Luna curried intense loyalty among his supporters but also inspired deep animosity among his critics, particularly when violence soared amid Mr. Calderón’s offensive against the traffickers. The strategy disrupted the criminal ecosystem but did not contain the violence between criminal groups, resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands of people and the disappearance of many others.
The strategy continued under President Enrique Peña Nieto, but the current president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has sought to discredit it, pointing to the fact that it failed to curb either drug trafficking or violence.
At a news conference on Wednesday, Mr. López Obrador said his government would not use the case of Mr. García Luna to beat up on Mr. Calderón, an outspoken critic of the current president.
“I do not want you to think that we are taking advantage of this circumstance to attack former President Calderón, despite all the damage he did to us, not only to me, but to the country,” Mr. López Obrador said.
But the president couldn’t seem to help himself, moments later describing the arrest as “a defeat to an authoritarian, corrupt regime, an element of proof that this model failed.”
Anabel Hernández, a Mexican investigative journalist who has reported extensively on the alleged ties between Mr. García Luna and drug traffickers, found in his arrest some vindication of her work.
“There was not a war against drugs per se, but rather a war between cartels in which the federal government picked a side and protected the Sinaloa Cartel, which only meant more violence for society and more power to the cartel,” Ms. Hernández said in an interview.
But for her, the indictment and arrest — in a foreign country — also reaffirmed her abiding frustration with the weaknesses of the Mexican state.
“It reflects the immaturity of the Mexican political system, the lack of autonomy and inefficiency of the Mexican justice system,” she said.
Some delighted in the news with a certain schadenfreude. In office, Mr. García Luna was hungry for media attention. Federal agents under his command once staged the arrest of a suspected kidnapper, and the liberation of three hostages, for broadcast on national television. He also enjoyed parading suspects before reporters and posing them with the piles of weapons and drugs impounded during their arrests.
“For poetic justice, I would very much have liked a live television transmission of the detention of García Luna,” Leonardo Núñez González, a political analyst in Mexico City, wrote on Twitter. “But these things only happen in places like Mexico.”
Many close associates of Mr. García Luna have largely kept quiet since the news of his indictment broke, as observers have speculated whether he has information that could lead to further indictments of former officials, not only in Mexico but also in the United States, which worked closely with Mr. García Luna during his years in government.
Some observers were quick to point an accusatory finger at Mr. Calderón, saying that if his chief security minister had been working hand-in-hand with the Sinaloa Cartel, and getting huge payments for his efforts, then the president had to have known.
“This indictment discredits the whole Calderón presidential term for a lot of people,” said Mr. López-Aranda, who served as Mr. García Luna’s spokesman at the Public Security Ministry for less than a year.
For supporters of Mr. López Obrador, he added, “Christmas came early. Christmas for the next five years came early.”
Mr. Calderón, who was not accused of any wrongdoing in the American indictment, said on Twitter: “My posture is always in favor of justice and the law.” But if the charges against Mr. García Luna were true, he wrote, it would be “a serious violation of the confidence entrusted in him.”
Guillermo Valdés, who ran CISEN, a national security intelligence agency, during Mr. Calderón’s term, cautioned that even if Mr. García Luna were to be found guilty of the charges he faces, the entire government should not be implicated.
“This would be a major blow to the Calderón administration, having a corrupt secretary of public security,” he said. But, he continued, “you simply cannot conclude that because of one corrupt government official, the rest of the government were obedient to the corrupt.”
“It will be very sad to realize that you worked with a two-faced official,” he added. “And in that case we will have to admit that it was a monumental mistake to keep him.”
MEXICO CITY — Even in a nation almost inured to corruption, the news was astonishing.
The man considered to be the brains behind the Mexican government’s militarized war on drug traffickers stood accused by American prosecutors of having been in the pocket of one of the major criminal groups he was ostensibly pursuing, severely undermining the very fight he was helping to lead.
Genaro García Luna, Mexico’s former public security secretary, was charged with taking millions of dollars in bribes while in office to protect the Sinaloa Cartel, allowing the organization to smuggle tons of cocaine and other drugs into the United States. At the time, the group was led by Joaquín Guzmán Loera, better known as El Chapo, who is now serving a life sentence in the United States.
The indictment, unsealed in New York on Tuesday, and the subsequent arrest of Mr. García Luna in Dallas hours later, stunned Mexico. It was as if Eliot Ness had actually been an accomplice of Al Capone.
“It’s huge,” said Jaime López-Aranda, a security analyst in Mexico City who briefly worked under Mr. García Luna in the late-2000s. “I’m still a little bit in shock. And I keep thinking back to the guy and our conversations and his team and his people. It’s the sharp disappointment. I mean — my God, man. It’s like — ” He paused. “It’s like the end of an era.”
Mr. García Luna was the chief engineer of the country’s controversial counternarcotics strategy that relied heavily on the armed forces to confront criminal groups and kill or capture their leaders. Mexico is still grappling with the legacy of his approach.
While it had some success in capturing dozens of prominent crime bosses, deploying the military also spurred a sharp increase in violence and left a trail of death, as monolithic criminal enterprises were fragmented into an array of groups that have proven to be even more violent and uncontrollable.
For some Mexicans, the news of Mr. García Luna’s arrest was almost unimaginable. For others, it was proof of enduring suspicions that he had been in bed with criminals all along. Still others interpreted it as a sweeping — and scalding — referendum on the two administrations in which he served.
Then there were those who found confirmation that the whole apparatus of Mexico’s government was once and forever corrupt.
Mr. García Luna was one of the architects — and the embodiment — of Mexico’s security strategy for a decade. From 2001 to 2005, during the administration of President Vicente Fox, Mr. García Luna led the Federal Investigative Agency, Mexico’s equivalent of the F.B.I. He then became the public safety secretary in the cabinet of President Felipe Calderón from 2006 to 2012, overseeing his boss’s “war” on drug trafficking organizations and the deployment of the Mexican military to wage it.
Politically powerful, Mr. García Luna curried intense loyalty among his supporters but also inspired deep animosity among his critics, particularly when violence soared amid Mr. Calderón’s offensive against the traffickers. The strategy disrupted the criminal ecosystem but did not contain the violence between criminal groups, resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands of people and the disappearance of many others.
The strategy continued under President Enrique Peña Nieto, but the current president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has sought to discredit it, pointing to the fact that it failed to curb either drug trafficking or violence.
At a news conference on Wednesday, Mr. López Obrador said his government would not use the case of Mr. García Luna to beat up on Mr. Calderón, an outspoken critic of the current president.
“I do not want you to think that we are taking advantage of this circumstance to attack former President Calderón, despite all the damage he did to us, not only to me, but to the country,” Mr. López Obrador said.
But the president couldn’t seem to help himself, moments later describing the arrest as “a defeat to an authoritarian, corrupt regime, an element of proof that this model failed.”
Anabel Hernández, a Mexican investigative journalist who has reported extensively on the alleged ties between Mr. García Luna and drug traffickers, found in his arrest some vindication of her work.
“There was not a war against drugs per se, but rather a war between cartels in which the federal government picked a side and protected the Sinaloa Cartel, which only meant more violence for society and more power to the cartel,” Ms. Hernández said in an interview.
But for her, the indictment and arrest — in a foreign country — also reaffirmed her abiding frustration with the weaknesses of the Mexican state.
“It reflects the immaturity of the Mexican political system, the lack of autonomy and inefficiency of the Mexican justice system,” she said.
Some delighted in the news with a certain schadenfreude. In office, Mr. García Luna was hungry for media attention. Federal agents under his command once staged the arrest of a suspected kidnapper, and the liberation of three hostages, for broadcast on national television. He also enjoyed parading suspects before reporters and posing them with the piles of weapons and drugs impounded during their arrests.
“For poetic justice, I would very much have liked a live television transmission of the detention of García Luna,” Leonardo Núñez González, a political analyst in Mexico City, wrote on Twitter. “But these things only happen in places like Mexico.”
Many close associates of Mr. García Luna have largely kept quiet since the news of his indictment broke, as observers have speculated whether he has information that could lead to further indictments of former officials, not only in Mexico but also in the United States, which worked closely with Mr. García Luna during his years in government.
Some observers were quick to point an accusatory finger at Mr. Calderón, saying that if his chief security minister had been working hand-in-hand with the Sinaloa Cartel, and getting huge payments for his efforts, then the president had to have known.
“This indictment discredits the whole Calderón presidential term for a lot of people,” said Mr. López-Aranda, who served as Mr. García Luna’s spokesman at the Public Security Ministry for less than a year.
For supporters of Mr. López Obrador, he added, “Christmas came early. Christmas for the next five years came early.”
Mr. Calderón, who was not accused of any wrongdoing in the American indictment, said on Twitter: “My posture is always in favor of justice and the law.” But if the charges against Mr. García Luna were true, he wrote, it would be “a serious violation of the confidence entrusted in him.”
Guillermo Valdés, who ran CISEN, a national security intelligence agency, during Mr. Calderón’s term, cautioned that even if Mr. García Luna were to be found guilty of the charges he faces, the entire government should not be implicated.
“This would be a major blow to the Calderón administration, having a corrupt secretary of public security,” he said. But, he continued, “you simply cannot conclude that because of one corrupt government official, the rest of the government were obedient to the corrupt.”
“It will be very sad to realize that you worked with a two-faced official,” he added. “And in that case we will have to admit that it was a monumental mistake to keep him.”
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