Peru Requests U.S. Help inFight on Traffickers

Lima seeks to collaborate with the FBI in combating cartels, a drug enforcement agent said to the U.S. Embassy.

Lima. The Drug Enforcement Police of Peru (Dirandro) asked for assistance from the U.S. Embassy in Lima to combat the numerous Mexican drug cartels entering the country and the violence they unleash, according to the WikiLeaks transmission this Thursday by the newspaper El Comercio.

In 2009, a chief agent of Dirandro met with senior officials of the Narcotics Affairs Section, the administrative drug entity of the U.S. Embassy, who informed them of a meeting with his counterparts from Mexico that have signed agreements to combat this scourge.

“The antidrug official summarized for NAS officials the recent history of Mexican drug traffickers in Peru and the new agreement [between the two countries],” said the transmission.*

“Peru is interested in working with the FBI as the government of Mexico does,” said the officer quoted in the document.*

The Peruvian official also expressed concern about the alarming number of illegal Mexicans who have come to the state and those that have been accused of drug trafficking. In 2008, they calculated an influx of 1,091 illegal Mexicans.

Additionally, the agent mentioned that representatives of the large Aztec cartel come to Peru via private aircraft to land on clandestine airstrips in order to prevent the control of migration.

The increase of people linked to drug trafficking in Peru unleashed a wave of violence, including hired killings. One of the most emblematic cases was that of Judge Hernan Saturno, who was shot a few blocks from the Palace of Justice in 2006 while trying a group of Peruvian, Mexicans and Colombian traffickers.

Of the more than 205,000 documents released by WikiLeaks, 1,388 documents originated in the United States Embassy in Lima.

*Editor’s note: These quotations cannot be verified.