MEXICO CITY — A former Mexican defense minister was arrested on Thursday night after arriving at Los Angeles International Airport with his family, according to the Mexican government, becoming the first high-ranking military official to be taken into custody in the United States in connection with drug-related corruption in his country. The former official, Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda, who was Mexico’s defense minister from 2012 to 2018, was arrested by American officials at the request of the Drug Enforcement Administration and will face drug and money-laundering charges in the United States, according to a federal law enforcement official in New York. General Cienfuegos was defense minister throughout the administration of former President Enrique Peña Nieto, who left office two years ago. General Cienfuegos’s arrest comes 10 months after the retired police official who once led the Mexican equivalent of the F.B.I. was indicted in New York on charges of taking bribes while in office to protect the Sinaloa drug cartel, one of Mexico’s most powerful criminal mafias.

Source: International New York Times October 16, 2020 04:38 UTC