MEXICO CITY -- One day after Mexico's Attorney General's Office announced it was dropping the drug trafficking case against its former defense secretary, Mexico President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Friday that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration had "fabricated" the accusations against retired Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos.
Lopez Obrador said there was a lack of professionalism in the U.S. investigation and suggested that there could have been political motivations behind U.S. authorities' arrest of Cienfuegos at Los Angeles International Airport in October, noting that the investigation had been ongoing for years, but the arrest came shortly before U.S. presidential elections.
The U.S. government quickly responded that it reserved the right to prosecute Cienfuegos in the future.
Lopez Obrador said Friday that Mexican prosecutors had dropped the case because the evidence shared by the United States had no value to prove he committed any crime.
"Why did they do the investigation like that?" Lopez Obrador said. "Without support, without proof?"
Asked whether Mexicans would feel disillusioned with his government's promise to root out corruption, Lopez Obrador said they would cover up for no one.
"We're not going to fabricate crimes. We're not going make up anything," he said. "We have to act based on the facts, the evidence, the realities."
Lopez Obrador acknowledged a prevailing confidence in the U.S. justice system among Mexicans, but said, "In this case, with all respect, those that did this investigation did not act with professionalism."
On Friday, Nicole Navas Oxman, acting deputy director of public affairs at the U.S. Department of Justice said, "The United States reserves the right to recommence its prosecution of Cienfuegos if the Government of Mexico fails to do so."
Lopez Obrador said the evidence shared by the U.S. against Cienfuegos would be made public.
In a statement Thursday night, Mexico's Attorney General's Office cleared the general.
"The conclusion was reached that General Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda never had any meeting with the criminal organization investigated by American authorities, and that he also never had any communication with them, nor did he carry out acts to protect or help those individuals," according to the office statement.
It said Cienfuegos had not been found to have any illicit or abnormal income, nor was any evidence found "that he had issued any order to favor the criminal group in question."
U.S. authorities' seven-year investigation was completely disproved by Cienfuegos within five days of having the U.S. evidence shown to him, according to the statement.
All charges were dropped and Cienfuegos, who was never placed under arrest after he was returned, is no longer under investigation.
If the investigation had been underway for seven years, why was Cienfuegos arrested days before U.S. elections, especially since he had also flown to the U.S. in March, Lopez Obrador asked. " What were they trying to do, weaken the Mexican government, weaken Mexico's armed forces, spark a conflict with the current government?"
Cienfuegos was arrested in Los Angeles in October, after he was secretly indicted by a federal grand jury in New York in 2019. He was accused of conspiring with the H-2 cartel in Mexico to smuggle thousands of kilos of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana while he was defense secretary from 2012 to 2018.
Prosecutors said intercepted messages showed that Cienfuegos accepted bribes in exchange for ensuring the military did not take action against the cartel and that operations were initiated against its rivals. He was also accused of introducing cartel leaders to other corrupt Mexican officials.
Under the pressure of Mexico's implicit threats to restrict or expel U.S. agents, U.S. prosecutors dropped their case so Cienfuegos could be returned to Mexico and investigated under Mexican law.
Acting U.S. Attorney Seth DuCharme told a judge at the time, "The United States determined that the broader interest in maintaining that relationship in a cooperative way outweighed the department's interest and the public's interest in pursuing this particular case."
Even though the U.S. yielded on Cienfuegos, Mexico's Congress a few weeks later passed a law that will restrict U.S. agents in Mexico and remove their diplomatic immunity.
Information for this article was contributed by E. Eduardo Castillo of The Associated Press.
