After more than 14 years, a former police official has been sentenced to jail time for the torture of journalist Lydia Cacho in December 2005.
Authorities announced Wednesday that Juan Sánchez Moreno, formerly of the Puebla Attorney General’s Office, was sentenced to five years and three months in prison and fined 12,113 pesos (US $645).
Sánchez was arrested in April of last year but three others allegedly involved in Cacho’s kidnapping and torture — former Puebla governor Mario Marín, businessman Kamel Nacif and another senior police official, Hugo Adolfo Karam Beltrán — are still fugitives.
Another former police officer, identified only as 53-year-old Alejandro R., was arrested in connection with the case in December 2018.
Cacho spoke out in January to express her disappointment at the lack of progress despite years of investigations and substantial evidence.
“Almost 14 years have passed and we still haven’t achieved [justice]. The strength of the criminals was able to do more than the honesty of the press, the bravery of the victimized boys and girls and my efforts accompanied by invaluable social solidarity,” she said.
Cacho is the author of The Demons of Eden (2005), an exposé that implicated businessmen Jean Succar Kuri and Kamel Nacif in an international pedophilia ring, for which Nacif and others allegedly retaliated by orchestrating her kidnapping and torture in 2005.
Cacho is still the target of retaliatory attacks and was forced to flee the country in August after thieves broke into her home in Quintana Roo and stole electronic equipment and materials related to her journalistic work.
The press freedom organization Article 19 stated its determination to ensure the execution of the arrest warrants of those who are still at large in order to guarantee justice. It also charged that Sánchez’s punishment did not fit the crime of which he was found guilty.
“. . . [the] punishment does not meet the gravity of the acts of torture or the command post occupied by Sánchez Moreno,” the organization said in a tweet.
Source: Milenio (sp)
