A month ago in Los Angeles, federal authorities detained Mexican Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos on drug-related charges. The arrest of the former Mexican secretary of defense on U.S. soil was unprecedented — and it marked a low point of distrust between the two countries.

According to Marcelo Ebrard, Mexico’s foreign minister, U.S. officials did not share their intention to proceed against Cienfuegos — whom the Drug Enforcement Administration had identified as “El Padrino,” a shadowy and influential facilitator for some of Mexico’s criminal organizations — until Cienfuegos was in custody. In an interview, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, the Clinton administration’s drug czar, told me he saw the arrest as “a provocation.” That it was. Never had a high-ranking Mexican official faced prosecution in the United States in such brazen fashion.

A few weeks ago, the formal process that would eventually put Cienfuegos on trial seemed set to begin. At first, the Mexican general was considered a flight risk. To send him back to Mexico seemed out of the question: Bringing him back would take years, prosecutors argued. The judge agreed and closed the door on bail. The possibility of a trial opened a window of opportunity in Mexico’s dual struggles against violence and corruption. Cienfuegos could reveal the inner workings of what U.S. authorities insisted was the corrupt link between Mexican officials — including, the DEA contended, the country’s highest-ranking military officer — and Mexico’s drug cartels.

None of that is likely to happen now.

In an extraordinary move, the Justice Department has chosen to drop all charges against Cienfuegos, a man U.S. law enforcement had been tracking for years. Despite having “strong” evidence that allegedly proves Cienfuegos took bribes and protected criminal organizations throughout most of his six years as Mexico’s secretary of defense, Attorney General William P. Barr chose to seek his release. Cienfuegos arrived in Mexico late Wednesday, where, Barr appears to hope, he will “be investigated and, if appropriate, charged, under Mexican law.” That seems improbable. After being notified of his rights and obligations by Mexican authorities, Cienfuegos headed home to sleep in his own bed. On Thursday, Ebrard vowed that the Cienfuegos investigation would be “worthy of Mexico’s prestige and dignity.”

What explains this remarkable turn of events? Cienfuegos is not the only high-profile Mexican cabinet member recently arrested on drug-related charges in the United States. Genaro García Luna, security minister during the administration of Felipe Calderón, is currently awaiting trial in New York and is unlikely to sleep in his own bed anytime soon. What made Cienfuegos different?

For Mexico’s security experts, the release of Cienfuegos offers definitive proof of the importance of the country’s armed forces in general and their growing influence within the López Obrador administration in particular.

“This has been a political operation,” journalist Omar Sánchez de Tagle told me. “For weeks, the army has made known its inconformity over the way this was handled. They told the government that the arrest has produced a rift.” According to Sánchez de Tagle, that López Obrador chose to intercede in favor of Cienfuegos should come as no surprise. “The relationship between the president and the army’s top brass is made up of mutual dispensations,” he said.

Alejandro Hope, one of Mexico’s most renowned security analysts, agrees that the decision to free Cienfuegos was “eminently political,” driven mostly by “the irritation it generated within Mexico’s armed forces.” Historically, Mexico’s civilian authorities have shown little appetite to oversee the country’s military. If Cienfuegos’s arrest had indeed put governance at risk, López Obrador might have felt that he had no choice but to act to rescue the embattled general from a trial in foreign land. “What were the terms of the negotiation?” Hope asked. “We just don’t know.”

Mexico’s whole diplomatic apparatus chose to show its teeth in defense of Cienfuegos. According to Ebrard, the foreign minister, Mexico threatened the United States with a series of unprecedented reprisals, including limiting collaboration with the DEA and other government agencies. “We might cooperate, but it will be under different conditions,” Ebrard warned weeks ago.

For Hope, the threat seems like a bizarre bluff. “If Mexico did all that,” Hope tweeted, “it would be shooting itself in the foot.” Whether Barr declined to call Ebrard’s bluff at a time in which Mexico’s president has chosen to side with President Trump’s post-election tantrum or Mexico’s bravado was indeed deemed credible, the Justice Department took the unparalleled step to release Cienfuegos. It did so by laying out a controversial rationale. “The United States has determined that sensitive and important foreign policy considerations outweigh the government’s interest in pursuing the prosecution of the defendant,” the Justice Department explained in a statement.

Barr’s decision to put politics over justice and to capitulate to Mexican pressure (or to other unseen political factors behind the bizarre negotiation) has been quickly slammed. “Attorney General Barr risks undermining that faith in the U.S. justice system and encouraging impunity at the highest levels in Mexico,” Sen. Robert Menendez (N.J.), the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, said.

Menendez is right. The onus is now on Mexican authorities, who must prove that while politics might have made the Cienfuegos repatriation possible, justice will still be served. In a country where impunity is the law of the land, odds do not favor a fair, just and transparent outcome.

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