One of the two men facing trial over Liam Payne’s hotel plunge death has been allowed to leave prison.
Braian Paiz will have to wear an electronic tag on his ankle as part of his home arrest.
The waiter has been languishing in jail since the start of January after being charged with selling the former One Direction singer the cocaine he snorted and smoked before his fatal third-storey drug-fuelled balcony plunge on October 16 last year.
Paiz, who has admitted to taking drugs with Liam at the CasaSur Palermo Hotel in Buenos Aires but denies selling him narcotics, lost an initial prison release bid after it was opposed by public prosecutors and a judge ruled he remained a flight risk. But three higher court judges agreed he could swap jail for house arrest and the ankle tag after he appealed, arguing his near year-long incarceration had caused him health problems and his family situation had worsened.
The other suspect, former hotel worker Ezequiel David Pereyra who is also facing drug charges, remains in jail and it was not immediately clear this morning if he would now apply for a similar home arrest regime ahead of their trial.
Public prosecutors have yet to make any official comment on the appeal judges’ decision, said to have been taken yesterday.
Paiz claimed in an interview from prison in October he had been beaten, scalded and threatened with electrocution since being arrested and remanded in custody. He also said he was sharing his remand cell with another 15 people who had nicknamed him ‘killer’ and left him in fear of his life.
At the time it emerged the 26-year-old had to give away some of his food and cigarettes to other inmates in an attempt to guarantee his safety.
Shortly after his interview he was moved from the cramped Buenos Aires police cell where he was held at first to a special LGBT wing in a new prison with better conditions.
His mum Sandra has complained massive legal bills have had a devastating effect on their family, forcing her to sell her hairdressing salon and downsize to a dilapidated home in Berazategui on the outskirts of Buenos Aires.
Like 24-year-old Pereyra, Paiz has been accused of selling cocaine to Liam, just 31 when he died, on two separate occasions and warned the prison sentence if convicted could be between four and 15 years.
He met the singer in a restaurant he served him at shortly before Liam’s fatal fall from the balcony of room 310 at the CasaSur Palermo Hotel.
Paiz has previously protested his innocence by claiming he is being scapegoated, but in a prison interview with Argentinian magazine Gente in October he made a series of new bombshell claims about the time he spent with the famous Brit.
Recalling the night they got chatting in Cabana Las Lilas, the restaurant in the upmarket neighbourhood of Puerto Madero Braian used to work at and Liam had picked for dinner, he said: “Liam approached me several times, always asking where the toilet was. But what he really wanted was to interact with me. He asked for my Instagram in front of his girlfriend.
“We started talking on a parallel account that he had created just for that purpose. It had no followers, nothing. We never used WhatsApp, as they said in the case. It was always on Instagram and then on iCloud.
“The prosecutor’s office deleted all my locations, but I have the screenshots.”
Braian said the first visit he paid Liam, on October 2 at the luxury Palacio Duhau – Park Hyatt Hotel in Buenos Aires where he was staying before switching to the CasaSur Palermo, lasted an hour and a half.
He said the singer showed him three new songs he was going to bring out and a photo of a young boy he believes was his now eight-year-old son Bear after sketching his face from a snap he took of him.
Speaking of his prison hell at his first lock-up, he repeated his earlier insistence he was innocent in an Argentinian TV interview in November last year: “I’m being accused of something I didn’t do. We shared less than two grams of cocaine that I had for personal consumption.
“I don’t deal drugs. I was just a user. What I experienced with Liam wasn’t a crime, it was a human moment.”
No date has yet been set for Paiz’s and Pereyra’s trial and sources close to the case are saying they don’t expect it to take place now until next year.
Pereyra is being held on remand in Marcos Paz Prison on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. The maximum-security federal prison is known for housing some of the country’s most dangerous men including drug lords.
Argentinian public prosecutors say their case against Pereyra and Paiz is based on phone, CCTV and witness evidence.
Lead prosecutor Andres Madrea said in June when he confirmed the two men would go to trial for selling Liam with drugs: “Based on the information obtained from the mobile phone seized from the late Liam James Payne, it was possible to establish that the defendant Paiz supplied narcotics to the aforementioned individual for consumption in exchange for money on at least two occasions.”
Three other men initially charged over Liam’s death were told in February the case against them had been dropped.
Liam’s close friend Rogelio Nores, hotel receptionist Esteban Grassi and hotel head of security Gilda Martin were accused of his manslaughter by a female lower court judge before her decision was overturned on appeal.
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