Lima – Peruvian President-elect Alan Garcia said on the weekend that international drug trafficking organizations are complicating the situation in this country, and he condemned the shooting death of a Peruvian magistrate by alleged hitmen of Mexico’s Tijuana cartel.
Garcia, who will be sworn in on July 28, said that there existed in Peru “foreigners who come (here) to commit crimes so as to sell drugs in other countries.”
“We don’t want them to come here and bring their assassins who murder judges,” he said, referring to the killing of Hernan Saturno Vergara on Wednesday as he was dining with a nephew in a restaurant near the seat of the judicial branch in Lima’s historical center.
Garcia emphasized with regard to the alleged hitmen that “they be taken to be judged” in their countries of origin and that they be placed in prison for life.
Saturno, who served on the First Criminal Court for Prison Inmates, was in charge of the trial of 48 drug traffickers captured in June 2002 with 1.7 tons of cocaine which they were intending to ship to Mexico from the Peruvian port of Chimbote, 440 kilometers (273 miles) north of Lima.
The members of the network, which is headed by Mexican Miguel Angel Morales, stand accused of drug trafficking, production, acquisition, stockpiling and possession, as well as transporting cocaine and other chemical substances used in illegal drug manufacturing.
Peruvian prosecutors have asked for 35 years in prison for Morales and other drug chiefs and 25 years behind bars for 38 other members of the band, as well as payment of a $3 million fine.
Meanwhile, Devida president Nils Ericsson said Saturday that Peru could become a “narco-state” if it does not strengthen its fight against drug trafficking and international crime.
He told CPN Radio that the Peruvian public and the entire world had been warned for the past several years “of the presence of foreigners,” among them Colombians and Mexicans, in the Huallaga and Apurimac-Ene river valleys, which are the country’s most important coca-producing areas.
Also on the weekend, Vice President-elect Luis Giampietri said in an interview published Sunday in the daily El Comercio that the new administration would increase maritime vigilance “as part of its plan to fight the international criminal organizations operating in (the) country.”
He said that “drug trafficking is a dangerous and elusive enemy” and to combat it effectively required “more financial, technological and logistical resources.”
However, Giampietri – a retired vice admiral – also admitted the anti-drug fight is very “costly and dangerous.”
He said the government would implement a coordinated effort by naval aviation assets and the navy itself to monitor the waters off the coast of Peru and detain vessels suspected of transporting drugs and would also order the police to pursue an anti-drug “ground intelligence” campaign.
Some 159,600 hectares (400,000 acres) are devoted to coca production in South America, according to the United Nations’ 2006 world drug report, which was released last month.
Fifty-four percent of that production is concentrated in Colombia, 30 percent in Peru and 16 percent in Bolivia.
