Tulum, Q.R. — The person detained and later released in Tulum last week was not José “N”, the nephew of a drug lord. On Monday during a press conference, the State Attorney General Raciel López Salazar made the report.
According to Salazar, the man was with a woman in a restaurant in Tulum eating when he was reviewed by authorities after having been reported moments before “for attacking a woman with her son when she was riding a motorcycle.”
The man in the Tulum restaurant was identified as Efraín “N” and his partner, Violeta “N”, who hours before, had left a hotel in Playa del Carmen.
“[On the day of this man’s inspection], at 2:00 p.m., the Municipal Police spoke to the Deputy Prosecutor of the Institution in Playa del Carmen telling him that the Municipal Police had detained José “N” in a restaurant in Tulum and that the Investigative Police had released him.
“At that moment I contacted the undersigned and ordered him to start an investigation into the events recorded by the Tulum Municipal Police. From the investigation that has been carried out up to this point, I can assure you that the priority target, named José “N”, was at no time in the Tulum restaurant as some media outlets erroneously reported.”
Likewise, he said that experts from the State Attorney General’s Office carried out facial recognition tests to rule out he was a known member of a criminal organization.
“An expert opinion was carried out on human identification with scientific methodology consisting of a comparison of facial features between the person who was in the restaurant and the priority objective, and our official expert Cristofer reached the conclusion that it was not the same person,” he explained.
López Salazar said in regard to the man in the restaurant, “no evidence was found on the man that would motivate an arrest in flagrante delicto.
“What I can assure is that the priority objective was not in the place. In the Municipal Police report it states that nothing was found on the couple to proceed with the arrest.
“Imagine, this priority objective that is pursued by authorities in a very busy restaurant having two burritos for dinner as a couple and also carrying and delivering 15 million pesos in his car so that he could be released,” he said.
