José Alberto Abud Flores, former rector of the Autonomous University of Campeche (UACam), was linked to a process for a crime against health in the mode of minor drug trafficking, his lawyer Edwin Trejo Gutiérrez informed the media. He noted that the former official will face his trial in freedom. Along with Abud, his driver and assistant were also linked to the process. The resolution was adopted by Guadalupe Beatriz Martínez Taboada, fourth control judge of the First Judicial District, after a hearing that lasted approximately five hours. The three defendants were subject to precautionary measures that include periodic signing and a prohibition on leaving the state of Campeche. Additionally, the judge gave the State Attorney General's Office (FGE) a two-month deadline to carry out complementary investigation. It was also agreed that Abud Flores will carry out the periodic signing in the Oral Hearing Hall, instead of doing so at the Unit for the Suppression of Precautionary Measures. The former rector's defense announced that it will promote an indirect amparo trial against the process linkage. Lawyer Edwin Trejo maintained that the drug found in an eyeglass case would have been deliberately placed by police and denounced irregularities in the processing of the seized objects. He affirmed that “there is no certainty that that drug existed” and denounced the absence of videos from the body cameras of the agents who carried out the arrest. Last Friday, Trejo assured in “Aristegui en Vivo” that the alleged violation of the chain of custody gives “zero reliability” to the case against his client. The Mexican Academy of Sciences (AMC), through its Human Rights Commission, expressed concern about the events and their effects on the institutional life of the university, where the University Board appointed Fanny Guillermo Maldonado as rector. In a statement, it pointed out that the public information about the operation in which the former rector was arrested on January 12 is imprecise and lacks details, in addition to pointing to “the non-compliance of the protocols required to guarantee the legality of the state police's actions.” More than 80 academics and researchers from different institutions in the country expressed their support for the former official and demanded a judicial process with due process. The AMC's Human Rights Commission maintained that the succession of events puts “serious risk to university autonomy that all public powers are obliged to respect.”
