MEXICO CITY (AP) – A day after Mexico angered US officials by publishing a full 751-page US file against former Defense Secretary Salvador Cienfuegos, the Mexican prosecutors who acquitted him released their own version – but with so many pages blacked out completely was almost impossible to say what they found.
The report released Sunday by the Mexican Attorney General’s office contained a 226-page stretch, with each page black, followed shortly after by a 275-page obscured-page stretch.
In the few sections with less editing, all names and images were obscured.
The officials seemed to be struggling to get the damage done to the justice system’s reputation after it took prosecutors just five days to fully release retired General Cienfuegos from US allegations, backed by years of investigation, that he helped drug traffickers in exchange for bribes.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on Saturday dismissed the US case as “fabricated” and his government released the documentation US prosecutors sent when they released Cienfuegos as a diplomatic concession to Mexico and sent him home for investigation.
The United States Department of Justice said the release of the full report of evidence was in violation of a legal aid treaty and questioned whether the United States could continue to share information.
That security relations were further embittered by the Mexican government’s decision to restrict US agents and waive their immunity even after Cienfuegos returned home instead of facing trial in the US.
The president said that while many Mexicans see the US courts as “the good judges, impeccable … in this case, with all due respect, those who conducted this investigation were not acting professionally.”
In the newly released Mexican report, the little visible appeared to have been involved in asking the military to investigate whether the allegations were credible and to rely on what Cienfuegos had officially declared in revenue.
For example, one of the few legible documents is a report from an army communications officer (name in editor) stating that no army berries have been officially assigned to Cienfuegos or anyone else.
The 751-page file that the US authorities shared with Mexico consists largely of intercepted BlackBerry messages exchanges between traders who have been murdered since then describing transactions with a person they identify as Cienfuegos, often referred to by the nickname ‘The Godfather’.
López Obrador relied heavily on the military for a wide variety of projects that went well beyond security and his administration apparently responded to military outrage over the arrest of Cienfuegos and complained that they had not been adequately informed about the matter in advance by US officials .
Cienfuegos was arrested in Los Angeles in October, but the US government dropped charges against him in November after Mexican officials threatened to restrain US agents.
The declassified US documents contained alleged intercepted text messages between the leader of the H-2 cartel in the Pacific coastal state of Nayarit and a top assistant, who reportedly served as an intermediary with the general.
In a conversation, Daniel Silva Garate told his boss, Juan Francisco Patrón Sánchez, that he had been picked up by men with military-style short haircuts and taken to the Ministry of Defense headquarters in Mexico City to meet with “The Godfather. “
Silva-Garate tells his boss that “The Godfather” said to him, “Now we’re going to do great things to you … that what you’ve done is small.”
Patrón Sanchez says he wants unhindered routes to send drugs from Colombia and send Silva Garate text messages back: “He says as long as he’s here you’ll be free … they’ll never perform vigorous surgeries” or raids.
Silva Garate tells his boss that “The Godfather” told him, “You can sleep peacefully, no surgery will hit you.”
Other exchanges describe that The Godfather reportedly offered to arrange a boat to transport drugs, introduce the traffickers to other officials, and acknowledged helping other traffickers in the past.