Ex-Governor Arrested For Torture of Journalist Who Alleged Links to Child Porn

MEXICO CITY - A former Mexican governor who went on the lam after he was accused of ordering the torture of a journalist was arrested yesterday in the pacific coastal city of Acapulco.

Mario Marín, who served as the state governor of Puebla from 2005-2011, spent nearly two years on the run after he became the focus of an arrest warrant related to the case over a dozen years ago. The disgraced politician stands accused of ordering the torture of prominant Mexican journalist Lydia Cacho after she exposed his connection to a pedofile ring in the mid 2000s.

“I have been seeking justice for 14 years after having been tortured by this accomplice of child pornography networks. Let's get them all,” tweeted Cacho after Marín’s arrest.

Cacho published a book called Los Demonios del Edén, or The Demons of Eden, in 2004 in which she accused Marín of participating in pedofilia and protecting other rich business men in the network, specifically a wealthy textile merchant named Kamel Nacif Borge.

After the book’s release, Puebla police officers arrested Cacho and tortured her. In a leaked 2006 phone call between Nacif Borge and Marín, the governor at the time, the politician admitted he gave Camacho a “smack.”

For years, Marín and Nacif Borge denied the allegations but in 2019, Mexico's Attorney General Alejandro Gertz Manero issued an arrest warrant for the two, along with the former Puebla chief of police Hugo Adolfo Karam who was allegedly involved in the torture of Cacho.

"The arrest of Mario Marín is a welcome step forward in a case that has lingered for far too long in impunity," Jan-Albert Hootsen, Mexico representative for the Committee to Protect Journalists, told VICE World News. "It should not have taken Mexican authorities almost 15 years to arrest Mr. Marín, and there are still other suspects that have not been arrested."

Both Nacif Borge and Adolfo Karam remain at large, while other prominent businessmen and politicians linked to the pedofile ring have continued to deny the allegations and live freely in Mexican society.

“Although Marín's arrest is undoubtedly good news, Mexico continues to be one of the deadliest countries in the world for reporters,” said Hootsen. “The vast majority of cases are never solved and it speaks volumes about the commitment of the Mexican state to justice that the Cacho case, one of the most well known and high profile ones, took so long to see meaningful progress.”