Photo: Deposit Photos

By KELIN DILLON

On Sunday, Jan. 9, Mexico’s Attorney General of the Republic (FGR) obtained seven arrest warrants for individuals involved in the so-called “Operation Fast and Furious” gun-walking case, including known drug kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera, former Mexican Secretary of Public Security Genaro García Luna, and former Police Intelligence Coordinator Luis Cárdenas Palomino.

In a statement by the FGR, the Mexican prosecutor’s office reported that the U.S. Department of Justice had helped provide the necessary information to establish the seven individuals’ cross-border trafficking of illegal firearms, which were later used to perpetrate various crimes throughout former President Felipe Calderón’s war on drugs up until the present day.

“In Mexico and in accordance with an own investigation, and with the data acquired in the corresponding preliminary investigations by the U.S. Department of Justice, it was possible to establish that these weapons were not only brought into the country illegally, but have also been used in various criminal acts, which have already been investigated and prosecuted in Mexico,” detailed the FGR document.

An investigation by the Special Prosecutor’s Office for Organized Crime (FEMDO) helped to establish Guzmán’s responsibility in the weapons trafficking scandal, though he is already currently serving life imprisonment at a U.S federal penitentiary for murder, money laundering, drug trafficking, racketeering and organized crime.

Cárdenas Palomino and García Luna are similarly serving time for their own previously perpetrated crimes, with Cárdenas Palomino residing within Mexico’s own high-security prison system and García Luna within the U.S. prison system, though Mexico seeks to extradite the former Secretary of Public Security for trial within its own borders.