Rebuttals come after US media report alleges that the CIA has ‘instantly participated’ in lethal anti-cartel operations.
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Mexico’s authorities and the CIA have rebutted a report claiming that US intelligence brokers have participated in the focused assassinations of alleged drug cartel members within the Latin American nation.
The denials on Tuesday got here after CNN reported that the CIA has been deeply concerned in lethal operations aimed toward dismantling Mexico’s drug cartels.
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CIA operatives have “instantly participated” in a number of assaults on drug trafficking syndicates since final 12 months, together with a automotive explosion in March that killed Francisco Beltran, an alleged member of the Sinaloa Cartel, CNN reported, citing a number of unnamed sources.
The operations have principally focused mid-level cartel members, with the CIA’s involvement starting from “passive intelligence sharing” to “direct participation in assassination operations”, CNN reported.
In a social media put up, CIA spokesperson Liz Lyons stated the CNN report was “false and salacious” and “serves as nothing greater than a PR marketing campaign for the cartels and places American lives in danger”.
Mexico’s Secretary of Safety Omar Garcia Harfuch additionally challenged the report, saying the federal government “categorically rejects any model that seeks to normalise, justify, or counsel the existence of deadly, covert, or unilateral operations by international businesses on nationwide territory”.
“Cooperation with the US exists, is vital, and has yielded related outcomes for each international locations,” Harfuch stated in a put up on X.
“Nevertheless, it’s carried out underneath clear ideas: respect for sovereignty, shared duty, mutual belief, and cooperation with out subordination.”
CNN didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark concerning the Mexican authorities and the CIA’s rebuttals.
Since returning to the White Home in January final 12 months, US President Donald Trump has focused Latin American drug trafficking gangs in an aggressive marketing campaign that critics say has overstepped authorized and presidential norms.
Trump’s administration has designated 9 Latin America-based drug gangs as “terrorist” organisations, together with Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel, La Nueva Familia Michoacana, and Carteles Unidos, and launched dozens of air strikes on boats suspected of ferrying medicine within the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, killing greater than 190 folks.
Trump’s anti-drug trafficking drive has been a supply of friction with Mexico, which US officers say is the principle transit level for the majority of illicit flows of fentanyl, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine into the nation.
Final month, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum threatened to sanction authorities within the border state of Chihuahua for allowing CIA personnel to take part in raids on clandestine drug laboratories.
Sheinbaum stated that she and different senior members of her authorities had not been notified of US involvement within the operations, which got here to mild after two Individuals who have been reportedly working for the CIA died in a automotive crash following a counter-narcotics raid.
Underneath a legislation handed by Mexico’s Congress in 2020, international brokers working within the nation are required to share data with the federal government and don’t take pleasure in diplomatic immunity.