Mexico Convicts 2 Generals On Drug-Trafficking Charges
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A Mexican military tribunal today convicted two generals on drug-trafficking charges in a case that was opened to the public, allowing ordinary Mexicans the opportunity to observe the country’s military judicial process for the first time in modern memory. The two — Gen. Francisco Quirós Hermosillo and Brig. Gen. Mario Arturo Acosta Chaparro — were arrested Aug. 31, 2000, and accused of drug trafficking and criminal association. The two were stripped of their rank. General Quirós was sentenced to 16 years, and General Acosta to 15 years. Their sentences will include time served since their arrest in 2000. The men, who still face separate charges of involvement in the disappearances of some 143 leftists during the 1970’s and 1980’s, used the opportunity of a public trial to protest their innocence. ”I’ve been in prison for two years, two months and one day for a crime that I never committed,” said General Quirós, who filed his retirement papers a month before the charges were brought against him. ”This government has said that in its two years in power it has detained 14,000 drug traffickers,” he said. ”But only one knows who we are, and that’s the protected witness in this case. So it seems we are the unknown drug traffickers.” General Acosta Chaparro, a counterinsurgency specialist who for years has been identified as a leader in the violent repression of leftists in the state of Guerrero, said, ”I wasn’t a criminal when the government arrested me — I was, and I still am, a general deserving of respect.” At the tribunal, the generals were called tools of the Juárez drug cartel once run by Amado Carillo Fuentes, who was known as the ”lord of the skies” for his control of huge airborne shipments of Colombian cocaine. He died in 1997 from complications after plastic surgery aimed at altering his appearance. More : query.nytimes.com |