Mexico City.- After a year in prison, Hugo Alberto Karam Beltrán, former head of the Puebla Police during Mario Marín’s administration, left the Cancún Penitentiary yesterday and will continue his trial in the case of the alleged torture of journalist Lydia Cacho at liberty.
The former police commander obtained the change of precautionary measure after a federal judge granted him an injunction in which he considered that there was no longer a risk that he could flee, confirmed ministerial authorities.
Instead of justified preventive detention, he was banned from leaving Quintana Roo and required to appear periodically to sign the book of defendants of the Second District Court in the state.
The Attorney General’s Office will file an appeal to revoke the former official’s freedom and return him to prison, federal officials said.
On July 13, 2023, the former police commander was arrested in Boca del Río, Veracruz, based on an arrest warrant issued in 2019 by the First Unitary Court of Quintana Roo for the crime of torture against journalist Lydia Cacho.
The events attributed to him occurred in 2005, when the Puebla Police arrested Cacho in Cancun with an arrest warrant for the crimes of defamation and slander, the origin of which was a criminal complaint by businessman Kamel Nacif Borge, known as “The King of Denim.”
Karam was head of the Puebla Judicial Police during the six-year term of Governor Mario Marín.
According to the Attorney General’s Office, the journalist was transported by land from Cancún to Puebla, a journey during which the torture that the FGR now accuses the former police commander of allegedly occurred.
Kamel Nacif sued the journalist for publishing the book “The Demons of Eden,” in which the author mentions the textile businessman as one of the guests at parties attended by underage perverts.
After Lydia Cacho was arrested, telephone conversations between the then governor of Puebla and the businessman were made public, in which they celebrated the “punishment” they had given the journalist.
Nacif is exiled in Lebanon, despite having won an injunction that cancelled the arrest warrant against him; meanwhile, former governor Mario Marín remains under trial and imprisoned in the Altiplano Penitentiary.
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