The 'Condor', From Military To Drug Recruiter : Sinaloa

 "Ivan" for Borderland Beat 

The soldier joined the Sinaloa Cartel as an bodyguard for 'Chapito Lomas' and was in charge of obtaining information on the movements of General Rolando Eugenio Hidalgo Eddy and Army operations.

Jorge "A" was a military officer who joined the Sinaloa Cartel as an escort for Alberto Zepeda Cano, El Chapito Lomas, and was in charge of obtaining information on the movements of General Rolando Eugenio Hidalgo Eddy and Army operations. He was sentenced to 36 years in prison, 10 years after his arrest.

The Attorney General's Office (FGR) announced that Jorge, known by the alias of Condor, had been convicted but did not specify that he was a former infantryman of the National Defense Secretariat (Sedena).

On January 12, the former soldier was sentenced for the crimes of organized crime, carrying a firearm and possession of cartridges, both of which are for the exclusive use of the Army, Navy and Air Force.

According to court documents, El Condor was arrested on February 19, 2013, along with two other people in the community of Las Lajitas, located in the mountains of Durango and Sinaloa.

According to the Sedena, that day at a command post in Tamazula, a man asked for their support because armed men had taken his son.

The military implemented an operation and in the community of Las Lajitas located a marijuana plantation and arrested two men and the Condor, dressed in military-style pixelated uniforms, and seized firearms, magazines and grenades.

In the criminal proceedings against the Condor, the Attorney General's Office proved that he had been in the military and that from at least 2007 until his arrest he was part of the Sinaloa Cartel.

"He had the functions of escort of the subject nicknamed Chapito Lomas, the recruitment of subjects at the service of the criminal organization and the collection of information related to the coordinates of the operations against drug trafficking, implemented by the Mexican Army in the area known as the Golden Triangle (Sinaloa, Chihuahua, Durango), which he obtained through USB's, provided by military personnel in charge of safeguarding the information, in exchange for gifts," the sentence states.

A soldier who became a protected witness said that the Condor had been his partner in the Army and at the end of October or beginning of November 2007, he looked for him in the guardhouse of the Ninth Military Zone, and the next day he went to visit him at his house, where he told him that he was working undercover and asked him for information about the entries and exits of "General Eddy," then commander of the zone, and the movements towards the zone where Zepeda Cano was.

The soldier agreed and between November 10 and 15 they met again in Park 87, where he gave the Condor a USB with cartographic charts of roads, towns, streams and rivers in the area of Huixiopa, Badiraguato; and then they went to the vicinity of the church of San Judas Tadeo, in Lomas del Bulevar, to open the contents of the device.

There, he said, they met with Chapito Lomas, who asked him how to contact the commander of the Ninth Military Zone so that he would let them work.

On November 20, they met again at the same place and Zepeda Cano questioned him about the functioning of the GT200 molecular detector that was used to detect weapons and drugs, and asked him to get one but the soldier told him it was very difficult.

On December 1, Chapito Lomas asked him about the new commander, Noé Sandoval Alcázar, and if it was possible to send him a present and he replied that it was very difficult; and at the end of the same month he asked him to contact him with personnel at the port of Mazatlán so that they could get ships in without being searched.

The last time he saw Zepeda Cano, he declared, was on January 19, 2008, when he told him that they were going to carry out the Sierra Madre operation and that Army elements would arrive, and he gave him a memory with information about the operation and the locations of military elements.

Another protected witness, also a military man, stated that he provided confidential information about the operations and at the end of 2007, outside an OXXO located near the Culiacan barracks, he gave the Condor a document with coordinates of where the military was going to set up.

The Condor asked him if he knew a sergeant and he answered yes, then the Condor told him that he had recruited him to send him information and they only had contact through text messages.

The judge considered that the evidence presented by the FGR was sufficient to prove Condor's responsibility in the crimes for which he was accused.

"From at least 2007 until February 2013 he actually joined the criminal organization led by Joaquín Guzmán Loera, aka El Chapo Guzmán, known as the Sinaloa cartel, in which he had the functions of escort, recruiter of subjects for the criminal organization and obtaining information of the operations implemented by the Mexican Army against the activities of the aforementioned criminal enterprise," the sentence states.

In addition to witness statements, the Attorney General's Office presented ballistics and digital forensic analysis and the extraction of information from cell phones and SIM cards.

The convicted person is being held in the Federal Center for Social Readaptation Number Thirteen in Oaxaca.

Article published on February 05, 2023 in the 1045 edition of the weekly Ríodoce.

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