Mexican authorities have arrested a former state governor on charges of arresting the illegal arrest and torture of a leading reporter investigating his protection of a pedophile ring.
Mario Marín, the former governor of the state of Puebla, was due to appear in court on Thursday after being detained in Acapulco the previous day.
Marín, from the Institutional Revolutionary party, took office in 2005 as governor of the state of Puebla. In the same year, reporter Lydia Cacho published the book The Demons of Eden, which involved several wealthy businessmen in a pedophile ring.
In December 2005, Marín sent police from Puebla to arrest Cacho in Cancún on charges of libel. She was driven to Puebla for 20 hours, during which police teased her, threatened her with rape and forced a gun into her mouth.
The case became a national scandal after a recorded telephone conversation was leaked in which Marin conspired with one of the men mentioned in Cacho’s book.
“Yesterday I gave that old bitch a good old slap,” Marin said. “She goes on and on, so let’s see if she gets the message and learns her lesson.”
Marín moved freely in public for years despite Cacho’s allegations. Finally, in 2019, a judge in the state of Quintana Roo issued a warrant for his arrest.
Leopoldo Maldonado, a lawyer with the press freedom organization Artículo 19 and a representative of Cacho, told Milenio TV on Thursday that Marín is now being held in the same prison in Cancún where businessman Jean Succar Kuri, who has already been convicted of his role in the ring, his sentence was served.
“The mates are reuniting again, but now in very different conditions,” Cacho wrote via Twitter on Thursday. ‘There’s no longer a luxury party, nor girls who have been the victims of the pederasts. There is no toast or celebration. Journalism is the way to justice. ”
Cacho has been under threat for years and now lives outside the country after intruders broke into her home, stole reporting equipment and files and killed her two dogs. She took her case to international bodies when the Mexican legal system did not act.
In 2018, the UN Human Rights Committee acknowledged the violation of Cacho’s human rights. In January 2019, the current Mexican government publicly apologized to Cacho for her arbitrary arrest. At the time, Cacho said, “We want everyone and the masterminds to be tried.”
“Lydia is very excited but aware that the risk is increasing,” Maldonado said Thursday.