In Blow to U.S. Alliance, Mexico Clears General Accused of Drug Trafficking

MEXICO CITY — When U.S. officers agreed handy again over to Mexico a former protection minister whom that they had accused of being on a drug cartel’s payroll, they did it in hopes of salvaging the badly fraying safety cooperation between the 2 nations.

But on Friday that relationship lay in ruins after Mexico exonerated the previous official, Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos, with out a trial, and accused its American allies of attempting to smear him with out stable proof.

Angry American officers noticed it as a shocking breach of belief by Mexican officers, who that they had anticipated would completely examine General Cienfuegos. The Americans mentioned that they had despatched them copious proof that linked the overall to the cartel when he was returned to Mexico in November.

Within Mexico, critics of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador accused him of caving in to his nation’s navy out of political expedience. He has more and more expanded the safety forces’ position in governance, and has closely relied on them to fight grotesque violence throughout the nation.

In feedback after the ruling on General Cienfuegos, President López Obrador questioned the integrity of U.S. investigators, saying they “did not act professionally” and had “fabricated” the allegations in opposition to the overall.

But safety analysts mentioned they have been apprehensive that the rushed nature of the ruling may counsel a seamless local weather of impunity in Mexico — supported by a president who had staked his legacy on rooting out corruption.

“This is a major slap in the face to American institutions,” mentioned Alejandro Madrazo, a drug coverage knowledgeable at CIDE, a Mexican college. “It’s evident that the Mexican government is more afraid of its own army than the U.S. government, to which it has been servile.”

Just a number of weeks earlier than, relations between legislation enforcement officers got here below immense pressure when Mexico handed a legislation gutting the flexibility of U.S. drug brokers to function in Mexico. Now, with the discharge of General Cienfuegos a number of days earlier than President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. is to take workplace, the brand new U.S. administration will face the problem of attempting to rebuild a relationship that has hit a stark low level over drug trafficking.

In current years, Mr. López Obrador had appeared to search out concord with an initially belligerent Trump administration by bowing all the way down to most of its calls for on commerce and immigration. In flip, Mr. Trump requested comparatively little of Mexico in the way in which of safety and acquired fixed reward from the Mexican chief for performing “with respect for our sovereignty.”

Then in October, with out notifying Mexico beforehand, U.S. brokers arrested General Cienfuegos after he obtained off a aircraft in Los Angeles. General Cienfuegos — who prosecutors mentioned was often known as “El Padrino,” the godfather — was accused of taking bribes to work immediately for a drug cartel, securing their narcotics shipments and introducing them to different officers prepared to just accept cost for cooperation.

The information landed like a bomb in Mexico, the place in a sequence of high-level conferences, high authorities officers fumed over being stored at the hours of darkness in regards to the arrest. The navy was significantly infuriated by the detention of certainly one of its most revered generals, which officers noticed as a direct assault on Mexican sovereignty. And they pushed the Mexican authorities to take motion.

In Mr. López Obrador, the nation’s generals have discovered an keen ally. He has made the navy a central pillar of efforts to combat violence, and it has been deployed throughout the nation to patrol metropolis streets, observe down cartel members and shut down drug labs.

The armed forces have additionally been endowed with a rising set of civilian obligations, together with the distribution of the coronavirus vaccine distribution and the development of a brand new airport in Mexico’s capital.

As the navy’s obligations have grown, so have its coffers. While Mr. López Obrador has gutted public funding throughout the board below a strict coverage of fiscal austerity, he has spared the armed forces, growing protection spending by almost 40 % since taking workplace in 2018. The protection ministry’s funds this yr is 5 instances as massive because the budgets of the overseas, inside and economic system ministries mixed.

“The army is the fundamental political actor in the public life of the country,” mentioned Alejandro Hope, a Mexico City safety analyst. “Nobody has more weight than the army.”

The Mexican authorities went all in on the combat over the way forward for General Cienfuegos, threatening to kick the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in a foreign country until he was launched. In a uncommon capitulation, former U.S. Attorney General William Barr bowed to the stress and the overall was rapidly transferred to Mexico.

At the time, Mexico’s overseas minister, Marcelo Ebrard, prompt {that a} vigorous home investigation of General Cienfuegos had change into very important. “It would be almost suicidal” to “do nothing” after getting the Americans to drop expenses and return him, he mentioned.

But two months later, Mexico has immediately cleared the overall of all expenses. Mexico’s legal professional common mentioned in an announcement that General Cienfuegos “never had any encounter with the members of the criminal organization” and had by no means acquired any “illegal income.”

The Justice Department mentioned in an announcement on Friday that the United States “reserves the right to recommence its prosecution of Cienfuegos if the government of Mexico fails to do so.”

American prosecutors had amassed 1000’s of BlackBerry messages that collectively prompt General Cienfuegos had arrange conferences between navy officers and members of the violent H-2 cartel, and had orchestrated operations in opposition to rival organized crime teams.

But it was not clear whether or not General Cienfuegos was ever immediately captured on a wiretap sending messages himself, in line with two former U.S. officers with direct data of the case and who spoke on situation of anonymity.

The case in opposition to him was initially based mostly on informants within the cartel world who had been developed by the F.B.I. But it quickly expanded to incorporate the huge wiretap, based mostly in Las Vegas, that implicated General Cienfuegos in federal drug crimes, one of many former officers mentioned, including that the prosecution had been vetted at every stage of the method by individuals on the highest ranges of the Justice Department.

General Cienfuegos was mentioned in BlackBerry messages captured by the wiretap, however he won’t have had his personal particular person tapped machine and PIN on the cartel’s communication community, each former officers mentioned.

But any shot at attempting General Cienfuegos evaporated this week, devastating the U.S. investigators who had constructed the case in opposition to him.

“There was a tremendous amount of naïveté in sending him back to Mexico,” mentioned one of many former officers, who emphasised that the United States had launched the overall in an try to keep up American legislation enforcement entry to function inside Mexico.

Mending the rupture in what was as soon as a deeply enmeshed safety relationship between the U.S. and Mexico will probably determine close to the highest of President-elect Biden’s overseas coverage agenda. Mr. López Obrador is anticipating that the Biden administration will probably be extra more likely to intervene in a wider vary of coverage points than Mr. Trump, in line with two Mexican authorities officers.

Mexico might have escaped extra vital pushback from the United States by passing the legislation limiting D.E.A. actions in December, when a lame duck Trump administration was consumed with protesting the outcomes of the American election.

Some analysts additionally raised suspicions about how rapidly the federal government reached a conclusion in General Cienfuegos’s case, suggesting that the upcoming inauguration of Mr. Biden may have been a immediate to behave.

“If they declared the file closed after Biden was in office, the U.S. would have to react,” mentioned Mr. Madrazo, the drug coverage knowledgeable. “They are hurrying up sweeping the case under the rug.”

Natalie Kitroeff and Oscar Lopez reported from Mexico City, and Alan Feuer from New York.