2023-12-15 16:41:52
This content was published on December 14, 2023 – 20:29 December 14, 2023 – 20:29
Quito, Dec 14 (EFE).- A lawyer who claims to represent the detained president of the Judicial Council of Ecuador, Wilman Terán, anticipated that he will request precautionary measures from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) considering that his arrest as a party of a major corruption plot is “political revenge.”
From outside the Flagrant Unit of the State Attorney General’s Office where Terán was detained, lawyer Iván Durazno hoped that the IACHR would grant the precautionary measure “because the way the country is, his life and that of his family are at risk.” .
Durazno asserted alleged irregularities in the arrest procedure of the president of the Judiciary, stating that he does not know the elements for which he was arrested, although he acknowledged that the crimes linked to the arrest are organized crime and hitmen (murder for hire). .
“We hope that in this case it is not ‘psychic influence’ either because everyone responds criminally for their own thing,” said the lawyer in reference to the expression used in the sentence where former president Rafael Correa (2007-2017) was disqualified and sentenced to eight years in prison for bribery.
“At the international level this case is not criminal or even constitutional, it is political ‘vendetta’ (revenge) for the competition of the judges,” Durazno added about the selection process for new judges of the National Court in which the lawyer said he was one of the candidates and which was the subject of controversy between Terán and the highest judicial instance.
Since August, the National Court of Justice withdrew confidence in Terán after he was elected as a representative for the Judiciary Council by the Council of Citizen Participation and Social Control (CPCCS).
Terán is among the 29 detained so far in the so-called ‘Metastasis’ case, an alleged large corruption plot regarding the infiltration of drug trafficking in the country’s judicial, prison and police apparatus.
During the search of his home, $25,000 in cash in $100 and $20 bills was found, according to the Prosecutor’s Office.
Among those detained are judges, prosecutors and police officers who, according to the Prosecutor’s Office, would be part of a network structured by drug trafficking mafias to be favored in their judicial processes in exchange for money.
The arrests were made during “the largest operation in the history (of the country) against corruption and drug trafficking,” as defined by the attorney general, Diana Salazar, involving 75 property raids, 38 arrest warrants and about 900 people. deployed among prosecutors and police in seven provinces of the country.
For Salazar, this case “is a clear x-ray of how drug trafficking has taken over the institutions of the State, to operate through ill-gotten money from judicial and political bodies and achieve impunity in some cases.”
“Today the term of ‘narcopolitics’ has been evident and is no longer distant, because we can see how criminal structures have permeated the institutions to achieve their objectives, and surely the response to this operation will be an escalation of violence,” he added. Salazar.
This police operation was carried out under the leadership of the attorney general at a time when Correismo seeks to promote a political trial in the National Assembly (Parliament) to remove the attorney general, after having brought the accusation in previous years that led to the disqualification and sentence of eight years in prison for bribery against former President Rafael Correa (2007-2017) and other collaborators of his Government. EFE
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