Photo: Latin Press
HAVANA, 22 Dec (RHC) Former Peruvian President Pedro Castillo, through his lawyer, today appealed a judge’s 18-time imprisonment and asked for the sentence to be changed to the equivalent of probation.
Defense attorney Wilfredo Robles questioned the legality of Chief Justice Juan Carlos Checkley’s decision to detain him while he is being investigated for alleged crimes including rebellion, conspiracy, abuse of office and serious disturbance of the public peace.
The charges relate to the December 7 attempt to dissolve Parliament and reorganize the organs of the judicial system, among other measures disregarded by the armed forces and police, which is why they were not implemented and Castillo by Congress with an opposition majority was dismissed and arrested.
Attorney Robles argued that Checkley erred in failing to verify that the procedure for waiving his client’s immunity had been followed, which requires a procedure that begins with a constitutional charge.
“The judge waived his duty of constitutional control and issued a political slogan as an order: All against Pedro Castillo!, trampled on the procedural guarantee and turned the preventive detention procedure into a pantomime of political revenge in one act”.
He also accused the public prosecutor’s office of unconstitutional and illegal action by initiating the preparatory investigations against Castillo and applying for preventive detention.
The defense attorney also argued that what Castillo was accused of did not correspond to the characteristics of the crimes of rebellion, conspiracy, abuse of office and serious disturbance of the public peace, since the first count from which the others derive were committed only by means of become the uprising of arms.
Prosecutors allege that by ordering the armed forces and police to assist him, he called on them to take up arms, which was nothing more than a coerced interpretation.
“My defendant is being charged with ‘arms taking up’ despite the lack of objective facts, just to fulfill a political slogan of his opponents and thus be able to arbitrarily imprison him for as long as possible.”
On the other hand, a technical advance from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which is preparing the visit of this group, visited former President Castillo in the prison for senior officials, where he is serving preventive detention, and reviewed the conditions of detention.
The visitors also received relatives of the imprisoned ex-governor, including his niece Vilma Vásquez, who said that Castillo’s health condition was failing and worried him, and confirmed that his loved ones had been subjected to abuse, harassment and other injustices. Source: (Latin Press)