By EFE
Sep 19, 2024, 10:09 PM EDT
The Eastern District Attorney’s Office of New York stressed on Thursday that former Mexican Secretary of Security Genaro García Luna deserves to be sentenced to life in prison, in addition to paying a minimum fine of $5 million dollars. The sentencing hearing will take place on October 9, where Judge Brian Cogan will dictate his sentence.
García Luna was found guilty in February of all charges related to drug trafficking, organized crime and false testimony before U.S. authorities, which could cost him between 20 years and life in prison, EFE reported.
Millions of dollars in bribes
In their written arguments for their request for sentencing, presented to the judge today, the prosecution insists that García Luna is responsible for various security charges.
“He exploited his authority and power by accepting millions of dollars in bribes from an organization he had sworn to pursue” (the Sinaloa cartel) and that “promoted a conspiracy to hold responsible the deaths of thousands of American and Mexican citizens,” the prosecution said.
The death toll during the time García Luna was in power as Secretary of Security (2006-2012) is about 62,000 Americans, who were victims of overdoses, and thousands of Mexicans.
“He made sure his hands were clean”
Prosecutors stress that “the fact that the defendant did not personally handle the drugs or pull the trigger is not a mitigating factor, but rather an aggravating factor (because) he made sure his hands were clean while serving the purposes of the Sinaloa cartel.”
The court also accuses him of having “not only shown no remorse for his criminal conduct, but also committed additional crimes of obstruction of justice once arrested,” accusing him of having organized “a clear bribery scheme.”
He claims that during his imprisonment in the Metropolitan Center (MDC) he made “unsuccessful efforts to bribe other inmates to fabricate false evidence,” efforts that were apparently denounced by them.
“Inhumane conditions in prison”
The letter does not refute the arguments that García Luna presented in a handwritten letter in which he denounced the “inhumane conditions” in which he was imprisoned and the attempts by the U.S. government to incriminate him by imposing on him cellmates who allegedly recorded 2,000 hours of conversations with him to support the evidence.
The prosecution concludes that the life sentence “will send a clear and necessary signal that accepting corruption by the cartels in order to provide them with assistance has serious consequences.”
It will also serve “to protect our communities” and demonstrate that the Government will not allow the sending of “immense quantities of drugs to the United States” to go unpunished.
Continue reading:
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