Mexico wants evidence to back up U.S. drug charges against officials

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Mexico is seeking "irrefutable evidence" to backmost up U.S. cause trafficking charges against a state politician and different officials earlier proceeding with extradition requests, President Claudia Sheinbaum said Thursday.

The U.S. Justice Department unveiled charges connected Wednesday against Sinaloa Governor Ruben Rocha Moya and 9 others, accusing them of moving with the notorious Sinaloa cartel to administer "massive quantities" of narcotics to the United States.

Rocha Moya, a subordinate of the Sheinbaum's left-leaning Morena enactment and adjacent state of her predecessor, has governed the convulsive authorities since 2021. The different accused officials are besides portion of Morena.

"If the Office of the Attorney General... receives coagulated and irrefutable grounds successful accordance with Mexican law, oregon if, successful the people of its ain investigation, it finds elements constituting a crime, it indispensable comply" with the U.S. extradition request, Sheinbaum said astatine her greeting quality conference.

She added that if grounds was not provided oregon found, it volition beryllium evident that "the extremity of these Justice Department accusations is political."

Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum holds her regular property league

Sheinbaum noted this was the archetypal clip that the U.S. had made narcotrafficking charges nationalist against a sitting politician oregon different high-ranking official.

"We aren't going to support anyone," she said.

Sheinbaum explained that among the impervious presented was a portion of insubstantial that shows alleged bribe payments to the accused politicians.

In a connection posted to societal media, Rocha Moya said helium "categorically and absolutely" rejects the charges from U.S. officials, saying the accusations were an "attack."

"It is portion of a perverse strategy to interruption the law order, specifically connected nationalist sovereignty, " helium wrote Wednesday successful a post connected X. "We volition amusement them that this slander doesn't person immoderate benignant of foundation."

Rocha Moya was a staunch state of Sheinbaum's mentor, former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The politician enthusiastically backed the ex-president's "Hugs, Not Bullets" policy, which progressive avoiding nonstop confrontation with almighty cause cartels. López Obrador built a governmental level by railing against endemic corruption plaguing Mexican politics.

The indictment alleges immoderate of those named person themselves participated successful the Sinaloa cartel's run of unit and retribution.

The indictment alleged that they were intimately aligned with the Sinaloa cartel faction known arsenic the Chapitos, which is tally by the sons of Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, the ex-cartel leader now serving a beingness condemnation successful a U.S. prison.

According to a 2023 U.S. indictment, the Chapitos and their cartel associates utilized corkscrews, electrocution and blistery chiles to torture their rivals while immoderate of their victims were "fed dormant oregon live to tigers."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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