A judge dictates prison for Luis Cárdenas Palomino, detained for torture in the Cassez-Vallarta case

2018 file image of Luis Cárdenas Palomino, García Luna's right-hand man Esteban Felix / AP

A district judge has ruled this Monday a formal prison order against Luis Cárdenas Palomino, the right hand of former Secretary of Security Genaro García Luna, imprisoned in the United States, and former head of the Regional Security Division of the Federal Police in the Government by Felipe Calderón when we have the information. Palomino was arrested last week, after almost a year in search and capture, for his alleged participation in crimes of torture on four detainees in 2012, among them the brother and a nephew of Israel Vallarta, the boyfriend of the French Florence Cassez for that then. The investigation indicates that to get them to confess to kidnappings on behalf of the criminal group Los Zodíaco, Palomino ordered the use of electric shocks and suffocation with plastic bags.The former police command must wait in the federal maximum security prison in the Altiplano for the process to conclude. Meanwhile, Vallarta continues to await his sentence or amnesty in prison after 16 years imprisoned, without a final trial, for a crime of kidnapping that he maintains that they mounted him.

Palomino will wait in prison for the resolution of his case. The authorities point to the ex-command of the Federal Police as the mastermind of the torture suffered by a group of detainees in 2012, when Palomino was the police chief closest to Genaro García Luna, the great strategist of the Mexican war on drugs who was arrested in the United States in 2019 and faces five charges for alleged links to organized crime. Derived from the investigation against the former Secretary of Security, an arrest warrant was issued from the Federal Court of the Eastern District of New York against Cárdenas Palomino, for his alleged protection of the Sinaloa cartel in alliance with García Luna.

Now, the Mexican authorities are investigating him for alleged crimes of torture. Mario Vallarta, Israel's brother, and Sergio Cortés Vallarta, their nephew, were subjected to torture along with two other men after the

scandal

, one of the most brutal examples of television montage and police corruption in history from Mexico, which gave rise to a book,

, by Jorge Volpi, and from which a television series is now being finalized.

It all started in 2005, when a video of the alleged arrest of the band "Los Zodíaco" circulated, among which were Israel Vallarta and his partner, the French Florence Cassez. The images - in which clear signs of blows were seen on the faces of the detainees - were nothing more than a montage that ended up causing a diplomatic conflict and a controversy around the police, but the torture was real. At that time, García Luna was looking to do a favor for a friend who wanted revenge on his business partner, a certain Cassez, in the person of his sister. The police hypotheses suggest that they invented a kidnapping to blame the French woman and her boyfriend.García Luna orchestrated a television show and called the public networks to serve them live the montage in which the police freed three people from the Las Chinitas ranch. Under the spotlights, Florence and Israel were pleading innocent. It turns out that they weren't detaining them then, but they did it the day before, as was shown later. Then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy stepped in to free Cassez, who had been in prison for eight years.

In 2012, Sergio Cortéz Vallarta, Mario Vallarta Cisneros (Israel's brother), Eduardo Estrada Granados and Ricardo Estrada Granados were apprehended by the police and subjected to a series of acts of torture for several hours with death threats, beatings, forced nudity and multiple humiliations, according to the family. The torturers sought to force them to confess to being part of a gang of kidnappers called "Los Zodíaco," like Cassez and Vallarta six years earlier. With 13 detainees and no progress in the process in the courts, the family has requested this Monday the closure of the investigation stage and is finally awaiting the long-awaited sentence.

According to the judge who signed the arrest warrant, there are elements to suppose that Cárdenas Palomino authorized electric shocks to be applied to the detainees and suffocated with plastic bags to force them to plead guilty.

The resolution of the case will have to wait for the Mexican justice, which 16 years later, still keeps Israel Vallarta in prison.

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