Lopez Obrador sees “ethical” to publish the file of the DEA of the Cienfuegos case

Mexico, Jan 18 (EFE) .- The president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, said on Monday that his government did “the right thing” and “ethical” by publishing the DEA file on the case of General Salvador Cienfuegos, former chief of the Mexican Army that was exonerated of the accusations of drug trafficking.
“You cannot fabricate crimes against anyone. What we did was the right thing to do, it is ethical, regardless of the law, which is not violated either,” said the president during his morning press conference from the National Palace.
This Saturday, the United States Government expressed its “profound disappointment” at the exoneration of Cienfuegos by the Attorney General’s Office of Mexico, which decided not to investigate it due to lack of evidence. And he also accused the Latin American country of violating a treaty by disclosing information that he had shared confidentially.
Given this, the president replied that “it is not possible that an investigation be carried out without support and we remain silent.”
He justified that the file was released on Friday because the circumstances required it, since the prestige of Mexico was in question.
“It is unprecedented (the publication of the file) but the circumstances required it, because the prestige of Mexico is at stake, and no group, no government can undermine the prestige of our nation,” he settled.
And he stressed that for this reason the commitment of his Government was to make known the information sent by the US Department of Justice “without deleting anything”, although he pointed out that the file of the Mexican Prosecutor’s Office, released on Saturday, did have parts deleted by the nature of the investigation.
The chief executive reiterated that the investigation of the United States Drug Control Agency (DEA, in English) was “irresponsible” because crimes were fabricated based only on photographs of screenshots of a cell phone.
He indicated that one should not think that foreign investigation agencies are “infallible or perfect”, nor that everything bad has to do with his government. “Yes there have been excesses, authoritarianism, corruption, but we are in a new stage,” he defended himself.
López Obrador ruled out that the relationship with the United States has been fractured.
“We act well and this does not affect relations, relations with the current government and with the government that will come into operation this week are good,” he said.
Cienfuegos was captured last October in Los Angeles and later transferred to New York, where he was accused of having protected and received bribes from the now-defunct Mexican H-2 cartel, a spin-off of the Beltrán Leyva criminal group practically unknown until the arrest of the general.
In November, however, the Mexican Prosecutor’s Office and the US Department of Justice reached an extraordinary agreement whereby the United States withdrew the charges of drug trafficking and money laundering against Cienfuegos in exchange for his being investigated in Mexico, where he was finally exonerated of all charges.