FGR Begins to Sell Off its Air Fleet

Yaqui for Borderland Beat from: Excelsior

Nearly 70 pilots of the Office of the Attorney General of the Republic (FGR) have not received assignments since December,  and are at risk of losing their jobs due to the reduction of trustworthy personnel in the federal government and the sale of helicopters and aircraft of the dependence.

400 criminals or more, of federal crimes, have been transferred by this team of pilots:
These pilots of the General Directorate of Air Services of the FGR , which became part of the largest air police fleet in Latin America, have transferred more than 400 criminals with federal crimes in a year, among whom were Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán .

Also, they have taken the military to the highest and most inaccessible areas of the mountains of Guerrero and Oaxaca, in the work of eradication of poppy fields and marijuana; They have integrated operatives to dismantle narco laboratories and have made surveillance and patrol routes in the most dangerous cities in the country.

"We work by risking our lives. Once in an operation to eradicate plantings, the criminals put a cable hidden among the poppies with the intention of knocking down our helicopter. That incident almost ends our lives, " he tells Excelsior , a pilot who omits his name to safeguard his identity.

             

Between 2015 and 2017, for example, he recalls how they managed to transport the military to Reynosa, Tamaulipas, in the midst of various operations, which were aimed at capturing Juan Manuel Loisa Salinas "Comandante Toro".

"In Tamaulipas, especially in Matamoros, Reynosa and Nuevo Laredo, by giving support to the National Defense Secretariat, we know, by intercepted communications, how the cartel members threatened to shoot down the helicopters if we continued to have presence in the place ", it states.

In Tamaulipas, pilots have also accompanied soldiers in aerial reconnaissance to locate clandestine camps, where criminals keep kidnapped victims and migrants. Guerrero and Oaxaca, have been frequently flown over for the destruction of drug plantations.

For the pilots, surviving this type of risk has been only thanks to their great experience, (almost 70% of this fleet has been flying over drug fields for more than 20 years); to the multiple filters imposed by the unit, such as crediting 1,500 flight hours (when a commercial pilot license requires 250), confidence control exams and various national and international courses. Some have trained in the United States, Colombia, France and Italy.

Today the future of pilots of the Prosecutor's Office is at risk, because the contract of some thirty expired on Sunday March 31 and nobody has mentioned anything to them about renewing their contracts or compensating them for their high-risk services, according to lawyer Rodolfo Martinez, Partner of the firm Trusan & Roma.

Approximately 70 pilots are at risk of losing their jobs.

Nor have they been invited to join the National Civil Guard and in November, a Bell 206 ambulance helicopter and the seven Bell UH-1H military type helicopters (models between 1966 and 1971), which were part of the war in Vietnam, were put on sale.  The government of the United States donated them in the 1990s during Ernesto Zedillo's six-year term, and that was argued in the bidding rules (PGR / DGRMSG / DAI / LP / ENA / 05/2018), they were not useful goods for the PGR.

"The pilots in the Prosecutor's Office are not over, as many people might think. We are a very specialized sector, which besides being a neuralgic part in the war against organized crime, I believe that our experience is necessary and could be of great help, for example, for the aerial surveillance of the pipelines most besieged by the huachicoleros " .

              
Although most of the work of the pilots has focused on military operations, also between 2016 and 2018 they were responsible for the transfer of organs from the National Transplant Center (176 in total) to various hospitals throughout the country and have been present in natural disasters, such as the earthquake 19-S.