Abel Barajas/ Reform Agency
Tuesday, January 24, 2023 | 06:25
New York, USA.- Sergio Enrique Villarreal Barragán “El Grande” was a collaborating witness in Mexico since his capture in 2010, however, federal justice has not considered his statements reliable and has acquitted practically all the officials that the drug trafficker accused in the country.
The operator of the Beltrán Leyva brothers was given the code name “Mateo” to declare the same thing against the military as against officials of the extinct Office of the Attorney General of the Republic (PGR) at the highest level, as well as against federal and state police chiefs, agents and even mayors.
He testified before the PGR against Division Generals Tomás Ángeles Dauahare and Ricardo Escorcia Vargas; of the Brigade Rubén Pérez Ramírez and Brigadier Roberto Dawe González, as well as Lieutenant Colonel Silvio Hernández Soto and Major Iván Reyna Muñoz.
He also accused Noé Ramírez Mandujano, former head of the Office of the Specialized Investigation Attorney in Organized Crime; the former Secretary of Public Security of Morelos, Luis Ángel Cabeza de Vaca; the former director of Regional Deployment of the AFI, Francisco Javier Gómez Meza and the former Regional Chief of the AFI in the DF, Roberto Sánchez Alpízar, “El Yanqui”.
Virtually all of them were acquitted and released.
“El Grande” became one of the PGR’s favorite protected witnesses when Marisela Morales was in charge of the agency and SEIDO, between 2010 and 2012.
But it didn’t take long for different judges and magistrates to come to the conclusion that his statements were -at best- “inconsistent”, because they did not know the accusations firsthand.
Ramírez Mandujano, the former head of the SIEDO, even revealed when he was released from prison that the PGR illegally granted him the benefit of protected witness, since the law does not provide for this prerogative to those accused of the crime of homicide and, at the moment, After his capture, “El Grande” had an arrest warrant for having murdered 15 people.
In 2013, with Jesús Murillo Karam already in charge, the PGR was forced to admit before a judge that they were not aware of and could not prove the statements of “Mateo” against Ángeles Dauahare and five other soldiers. This was stated by the then Attorney General’s Office when presenting conclusions non-accusatory in the trial, which in fact meant a withdrawal and freedom for the military, who were imprisoned in the Altiplano prison.
Among the few who remain in jail today for testimonies of “El Grande” are the former mayor of Iguala, José Luis Abarca, and his wife María de los Ángeles Pineda Villa, sister of Mario and Alberto Pineda Villa “El MP” and ” El Borrado”, extinct operators of capo Arturo Beltrán Leyva “El Barbas”.
Regardless of whether their testimonies were false or true, the drug trafficker found them enough to negotiate his freedom, after 9 years in prisons in Mexico and the United States, despite his long chain of crimes.
Villarreal was born on September 21, 1969 in Torreón, Coahuila, and because of his size, 1.98 tall, he was called “El Grande” and “El King Kong”.
The Navy detained the man from Coahuila in Puebla on September 12, 2010, and he followed the same path as Edgar Valdez Villarreal “La Barbie”: collaborating with the authorities in exchange for benefits. On May 23, 2012, he was extradited to the United States and in December 2019 he was released.
