Former Governor Mario Marín was released from Altiplano prison on Wednesday. In an early morning operation, the National Guard took the president to his home in Puebla, where he will continue the judicial process of torture of journalist Lydia Cacho. After three and a half years in the high security prison, a judge in Quintana Roo granted Marín an injunction to change his precautionary measure to house arrest. Both Cacho and organizations such as Article 19 have warned of the possible risk of the former governor fleeing.
Marín arrived at his home in the Xilotzingo neighborhood of Puebla City in a National Guard ambulance, which was escorted by three other military vehicles. The former PRI governor will wear an electronic bracelet 24 hours a day, he cannot leave the State of Puebla or the country, his passport has been taken away and he will have to sign in periodically at the court. He also cannot approach Lydia Cacho and has paid a bail of 100,000 pesos.
The journalist’s lawyer, Eva Lozada Carmona, explained that this change in the precautionary measure “is not a total exoneration” but rather “the Inter-American Court’s criteria that a person cannot be in preventive detention for more than two years are being applied to her benefit.” However, Lydia Cacho has held Judge Angélica Ortuño Suárez responsible “for anything that may happen” to her legal team or to herself: “He is a dangerous prisoner for me, for my witnesses and my family.”
The judicial decision to release Marín from prison has also been heavily criticized by Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The president showed an image of the former governor in the ambulance leaving the prisoner this Wednesday, in his morning press conference: “That is the law, there is no way we have to comply with it. But there must be two or three patrols of the National Guard in custody, so much need for the National Guard to be looking after the safety of the people, and he will be at home.” “This is why we want to reform the judicial power,” the president took the opportunity to say.
Mario Marín’s house in Residencial San Ángel, in the city of Puebla, where he will be placed under house arrest on August 13. Mireya Novo (Cuartoscuro)
The politician is accused of ordering the torture and illegal arrest of journalist Lydia Cacho in 2005, when he governed Puebla (2005-2011). Cacho had denounced in his book Los demonios del edén a network of child sexual exploitation in which he mentioned businessmen Jean Succar Kuri and Kamel Nacif as responsible. The leak of a conversation between Nacif and Marín revealed that the governor promised to give the journalist a lesson for having revealed them and, at the same time, promised her impunity.
The journalist was arrested by the Puebla Prosecutor’s Office on charges of defamation, in an action ordered by Marín. She was transferred from Quintana Roo to Puebla on a 20-hour road trip, during which she was tortured and threatened with death by judicial agents. The justice system also began searching for those who participated in Cacho’s arrest, including the former head of the Puebla Judicial Police, Adolfo Karam.
After the Lydia Cacho case became known, the former governor remained unpunished for more than a decade and the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) refused to start a trial against him while he remained at the head of the Government of Puebla. In 2019, the United Nations demanded that the Mexican Government begin judicial proceedings against those responsible for the torture of Cacho. Marín was arrested in 2021 in Acapulco (Guerrero) by the Attorney General’s Office of the Republic.
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