{"id":28425,"date":"2024-10-17T05:35:30","date_gmt":"2024-10-17T09:35:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=28425"},"modified":"2024-10-17T05:35:30","modified_gmt":"2024-10-17T09:35:30","slug":"mexico-drug-tsars-spectacular-fall-from-grace-culminates-in-ny-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2024\/10\/17\/mexico-drug-tsars-spectacular-fall-from-grace-culminates-in-ny-court\/","title":{"rendered":"Mexico drug tsar’s spectacular fall from grace culminates in NY court"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Appearing in a crisp suit and dark tie, Genaro Garc\u00eda Luna \u2013 the highest-ranking Mexican official ever to be convicted in the United States \u2013 remained impassive as his sentence was handed down in a New York courtroom.<\/b><\/p>\n

He was sentenced to more than 38 years in prison, as well as a $2m (\u00a31.5m) fine. It was not the life sentence he could have received, but a jail term that the judge, Brian Cogan, felt reflected the severity of his crimes.<\/p>\n

A small group of demonstrators outside court on Wednesday greeted the news with jubilation.<\/p>\n

It marks the final chapter in the story of the most spectacular fall from grace in modern Mexico.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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If anyone was Mexico\u2019s drug war tsar \u2013 the chief architect and public face of the government\u2019s security strategy under then-President Felipe Calder\u00f3n \u2013 it was Garc\u00eda Luna.<\/p>\n

The sentence will also increase the pressure on Mr Calder\u00f3n, too, who has always claimed he knew nothing of his security chief\u2019s illegal activities.<\/p>\n

Garc\u00eda Luna has maintained his innocence. But to see him sentenced to almost four decades behind bars for drug-related crimes is more than even his fiercest critics dared to imagine while he was in office.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis role in ramping up the war on drugs in Mexico from 2006 to a whole new level can\u2019t be overstated\u201d, says Falko Ernst, an independent drug war and security expert in Mexico.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe championed a force-based solution against organised crime in Mexico like never before and revamped the state apparatus accordingly.\u201d<\/p>\n

To find that during his outwardly “proactive” stance on drug crime, he was in fact in bed with one of the region\u2019s most violent and feared cartels, is emblematic of the kind of corruption and duplicity that makes Mexicans so sceptical of their politicians.<\/p>\n

For Mr Ernst, the Garc\u00eda Luna case also reveals a fundamental contradiction at the heart of the so-called “war on drugs”.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt shows how this recipe of a supposedly \u2018good\u2019 state acting against the bad guys and wiping them off the map doesn\u2019t square with the realities on the ground in Mexico,\u201d he argues.<\/p>\n

As Mexico\u2019s Public Security Secretary, Genaro Garc\u00eda Luna was able to direct state resources and security forces against the Sinaloa cartel\u2019s main rivals, an extremely brutal and violent criminal organisation called Los Zetas. In return for that favouritism, he received millions of dollars in bribes, for which he was convicted in a US federal court last year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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