Prosecutor’s Office dismissed and disqualified for 14 years the Esmad commander for illegally retaining a minor

2023-08-03 04:15:14

A commander of the Mobile Riot Squad (Esmad) was sanctioned by the Attorney General’s Office with dismissal and disqualification for 14 years after excessive use of force and the illegal deprivation of liberty of a minor were proven in the midst of the protests of the National strike, in May 2021.

This is Víctor Hugo Martínez, a uniformed man who, in the company of patrolmen Julián Andrés Martinez, Jhon Jader Montenegro and two other members of the squad, captured a young woman when she was crouching in the front yard of a house located in Versalles Pajonal, in Popayán, possibly recording the police action, transferring it to the Immediate Reaction Unit, URI.

According to the decision of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, they were found responsible for the charges made against the uniformed officers who caused damage to the integrity of the 17-year-old adolescent, as a consequence of the excessive use of force used after being detained in the sector and routed to the URI.

It is not the first time that Esmad has been investigated

Patrolman Martín Elías Martínez Soñet, a member of the Mobile Anti-Riot Squad (Esmad) Number 23 of the Police, was summoned to a hearing by the Attorney General’s Office for his alleged abuse of authority during a day of national strike in 2021 in Popayán, Cauca.

The Public Ministry explained that, apparently, in an arbitrary act, the person investigated would have attacked a person who identified himself as a member of a Human Rights network in the middle of the day of demonstrations on June 28, 2021.

“For the control entity, the work of the uniformed officer implied preventing and protecting the rights of the people who were compromised during the proceedings, without prejudice to their duties and activities for the restoration of order and citizen tranquility,” explained the Attorney General’s Office in a release.

For this reason, at this procedural stage, Martínez’s offense was classified as “very serious as fraud.”