by starroute » Sat Feb 25, 2006 2:56 am
<!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/redir.php?jid=160fcd4b7336a1a8&cat=c08dd24cec417021">feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/...4cec417021</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>MEXICO CITY, Feb 24 (IPS) - When Mexican freelance journalist and human rights activist Lydia Cacho published a book last year exposing a paedophile ring, she was warned by friends and colleagues that she would run into trouble.<br><br>It did not take long for their warnings to come true. She was arrested by the police, driven 900 kms to the state of Puebla, held for 30 hours, mistreated and threatened. Now that she is the target of the wrath of powerful Mexican businessmen and politicians, she is worried that the worst is yet to come. . . .<br><br>Her book, "Los demonios del Edén" (The Demons of Eden), contains the personal accounts of minors who talk about the sexual abuse they suffered at the hands of a child prostitution and pornography ring in which prominent figures were allegedly involved. . . .<br><br>The 43-year-old writer, who is the director of a Cancún women's shelter, has been under police protection since she began to receive threats last year.<br><br>More recently, she was dragged into a scandal after a dozen taped telephone conversations were leaked to the press and broadcast on Feb. 14. In the obscenity-laced conversations, a voice identified as that of Mario Marín, the governor of the state of Puebla, can be heard telling a man who is allegedly textile mogul Kamel Nacif that "I just gave a bump on the head to that old witch."<br><br>In her book, Cacho described Nacif as a friend of Jean Succar, a Lebanese-born businessman who is facing charges of arranging paedophile parties.<br><br>The illegally taped phone conversations attributed to the governor and various individuals, including a reporter, apparently took place in December, after Cacho was taken into custody by the police in the southeastern resort town of Cancún and driven to Puebla.<br><br>In the conversations, the voices identified as those of Nacif and Marín discuss how they had the activist arrested and thrown into a cell with "nutcases and dykes (lesbians)," so that she would be raped.<br><br>That did not happen, however, because in the prison in Puebla, "the prisoners themselves and the guards protected me," said the writer. . . .<br><br>Nacif filed his suit against Cacho in Puebla, where most of his business interests are based and where he claims to have influential friends, including the governor himself. However, the crimes in which he is implicated took place in Cancún, and the book that accused him of involvement was published in Mexico City.<br><br>There are numerous irregularities in the trial against Cacho which demonstrate that Governor Marín and his friends manipulated the justice system to suit their own purposes, says Miguel Granados Chapa, a columnist with the Mexican daily Reforma.<br><br>Cacho, who is also the co-founder of the Centro Integral de Apoyo a la Mujer (CIAM), a shelter for victims of domestic violence and rape in her home base of Cancún, interviewed many of Succar's victims for her book. The youngsters described how the hotel owner sexually abused them himself, set up a prostitution ring to allow others to abuse them, and photographed them in order to sell the pornographic images on the Internet.<br><br>This case is just one thread in a vast web of similar rings throughout Mexico.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br> <p></p><i></i>
