MEXICO CITY — The alleged leader of an infamous Mexican kidnapping ring walked out of a maximum security prison after nearly 20 years Friday, hours after a judge said there wasn’t sufficient evidence to support the charges holding him.

Interior Secretary Rosa Icela Rodríguez on Friday rattled off a list of appeals, injunctions and complaints filed over the years of Israel Vallarta’s imprisonment in a case that never arrived at a verdict.

Vallarta had been charged with organized crime and kidnapping, but a judge tossed those out Thursday.

The Attorney General’s Office did not immediately respond as to whether it would appeal.

Vallarta was arrested in 2005, along with his girlfriend French citizen Florence Cassez.

Cassez was eventually convicted and sentenced to 60 years on charges of a

See Full Page