Former Mexican minister charged with drug-trafficking by the US

Mexico’s president has promised to clean up the country’s protected forces after a previous defence minister was captured in the United States on drug trafficking and money laundering charges this week.

Salvador Cienfuegos, who was Mexico’s defence head from 2012 to 2018, was detained at Los Angeles International Airport on Thursday, taking Mexico’s security corporation by astonishment, senior federal sources stated.

US authorities did not warn their Mexican counterparts of the process.

As per the reports issued by US federal prosecutors in New York on Friday, prosecutors cite Cienfuegos of planning to create and give heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine and cannabis in the US between December 2015 and February 2017.

“In trade for bribe payments, he allowed the H-2 Cartel – a cartel that regularly involved in large-scale intensity, including torture and murder – to work with dispensation in Mexico,” the statement explained.

The prosecution stated the proof against the retired general, nicknamed “The Godfather”, added thousands of Blackberry communications between Cienfuegos and cartel members that were caught by the authorities.

During a short hearing in Los Angeles on Friday, a federal judge commanded Cienfuegos continue to stay in US custody at least till a legal hearing on his arrest is held next week.

The ex-defence minister had requested for a suspension of the detention hearing.“Regrettably, a defence secretary is captured, indicted of links with drug trafficking,” Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador declared at his daily news conference earlier on Friday.

“We’re viewing an unprecedented situation,” Lopez Obrador continued, noting that two previous Mexican ministers are now confined in the US on accusations of links to drug cartels.

“Of course, all this must be determined,” he stated.

Lopez Obrador, who came to rule in 2018 pledging to break down on corruption, continued that the checks are a piece of fair evidence that Mexico was earlier run by “a narco-government and without a doubt a mafia government”.