Omar García Harfuch, Secretary of Public Security of Mexico City whom dozens of gunmen tried to kill this Friday with heavy-caliber weapons in the capital, has been a key player in the capture of several drug traffickers.
38 years old and lawyer by professionGarcia Harfuch is a security specialist who has completed internships at Havard University, the Federal Police (FBI) and the United States Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).
He is the son of actress and singer María Sorté and Javier García Paniagua, who was director of the disappeared federal security directorate, identified as responsible for the so-called “dirty war” against sympathizers of the Mexican left in the 1970s and 1980s.
From 2016 to 2019, he was head of the defunct criminal investigation agency (ACI) of the attorney general’s office and played a key role in operations to arrest organized crime leaders.
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From the hospital where he is recovering from three bullets and shrapnel wounds, he did not hesitate to blame the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel (CJNG) for the attack in which two of his bodyguards and one passer-by died.
“Our Nation must continue to confront the cowardly organized crime. We will continue working,” he wrote on Twitter. Specialists consider the CJNG as the bloodiest criminal organization in the country.
García Harfuch participated in the capture of Dámaso López “El Licenciado”, partner of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, former head of the Sinaloa cartel sentenced to life in prison in the United States.
López was arrested in May 2017 in a central sector of the capital and extradited to the United States, where he was also sentenced to life in prison. He testified at the trial against Guzmán.
In May 2019, still at the head of the AIC, he contributed to the arrest of Jorge Flores Concha, “el Tortas”, the alleged leader of the Anti-Union Force, and Pedro Ramírez Pérez, “el Jamón”, said leader of La Union of Tepito.
These two criminal organizations, which emerged in the popular Tepito neighborhood, in the historic center of Mexico City, have a local influence but also links to large drug trafficking cartels.
In 2017, he also participated in the arrest of former governors Javier Duarte, in Guatemala, and Roberto Borge, in Panama, accused of corruption.
García Harfuch has also been intelligence chief of the disappeared federal police, police coordinator of the violent state of Guerrero (south) and until last October he headed the investigative unit of the prosecution of the capital.
He was then appointed Secretary of Security by the head of the government of Mexico City, Claudia Sheinbaum, co-supporter of the leftist president Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
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