Omar García Harfuch has had a visit to the sui generis hospital, to say the least, after the attack he suffered last Friday where three dozen mercenaries wanted to kill him. First, before entering the operating room for intervention, he accused the Nueva Generación cartel (CNG) on his Twitter account of being behind the attack. Then, in his convalescence, he took photographs with the head of the Government of Mexico City, Claudia Sheinbaum, and with the head of the Financial Intelligence Unit, Santiago Nieto. In the first case, the message that remains is of institutional strength. In the second, fear.
The photograph where he appears in the hospital room with Nieto, was uploaded to Twitter on Monday by the same federal official. The photograph is interesting because, according to the National Intelligence Center, they appear in the third of officials that the CNG had thought to assassinate. But the relevance, for the message it projects, is the frivolous neglect of the composition of the image, showing a bulletproof vest and an Galil assault rifle, of Israeli manufacture, a weapon used by armies and police in 25 countries, which shoots 600 to 800 shots per minute, with an effective range of 300 to 500 meters.
The photograph does not speak of the secretary of Citizen Protection of Mexico City, as someone brave and fearless, but of who does not trust anyone and is afraid that the criminals who ordered his death, want to finish him off in the hospital. García Harfuch is recovering from gunshots to the arm and right clavicle, so, being right-handed, he cannot use them to defend himself. But since the Galil is a light weapon -weighs 2.8 kilos-, he could use it with his left arm, thanks to military training received abroad.
The underlying question, however, is why have such a powerful weapon in your hospital room. Isn’t vigilance at the doors of your room enough? Is the perimeter security in the hospital insufficient? García Harfuch reflects fear and uncertainty. Is right. The response of the federal government after his attack was null. The President said that they will not fight drug trafficking, asking them to behave well. The secretary’s doubts are well founded.
If Sheinbaum’s photographs served the propagandistic purpose of sending the message to the public that he was fine, in terms of security there is irresponsibility in giving information to whoever wants to kill him, by showing the hospital room. In military and police operations, criminals and terrorists, the plans of where an attack is to be carried out are fundamental in its planning. Sheinbaum gave everyone an image that, in the context of the attack, should have been hidden until he left the hospital.
Sheinbaum acted as a citizen, not as an official, and without understanding that there are times when information has to be kept confidential. She does not understand security issues, obviously, as she showed again this Tuesday, when she declared that García Harfuch would be two or three more days in hospital. That is to say, it already showed what the hospital room has, and also it traced the universe of time. If someone wants to finish it off, they have the information of the hours they have left to try it and the space with which they would run into. The photograph that Nieto made public also adds the fire capacity of the secretary in her room, and her diminished physical capacity. All this is accounted for, in an eventual second attack, in minutes and seconds of execution.
García Harfuch does not seem to be thinking that if someone wants to go finish him off, he could go through the door of his room in the hospital, because of the assault rifle that he has in the room, a weapon used by infantry squads, and that it would not be functional in a shootout inside the room. By not seeing – which does not mean he does not have – a pistol next to him, it can be inferred that his fear is in the security perimeter around the hospital, where he would have the distance so that the Galil could operate at its maximum capacity.
The attack that García Harfuch suffered shows that they wanted to assassinate him. If they failed once, the probability that they will try again is huge. Even if he were to consider – although he already said he will not – leaving office, that does not automatically save his life. It is not enough for him to protect his life, because that possibility exceeds his capabilities, and even the Government of Mexico City, which lacks the resources to provide the best conditions so that they do not kill him. The only force that could protect your life with a chance of success is the federal government.
López Obrador could consider appointing him to a position abroad, to geographically alienate him from those seeking to kill him. Doing so would not buy his life, because the tentacles of drug trafficking are cross-border, as Enrique Parejo knows, who two years after succeeding the Colombian Minister of Justice, Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, assassinated by the Medellín cartel, was sent as ambassador to Hungary in 1986 to protect him from drug traffickers. About six months later, Pablo Escobar’s arms reached him in Budapest, in an attack on leaving his home, from which he survived.
The protection of the Colombian Government to Parejo allowed him to live to this day. That was a state decision for an official who was grateful for her commitment to organized crime. García Harfuch has been told the same thing, although it is only words. The rifle in his hospital room projects him as an official whose life is in danger, in a vulnerable situation and, until now, abandoned by the Mexican Government.
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