2023-09-30 23:13:25
Geneva (AFP) – Switzerland suspended the release of former Guatemalan police director Erwin Sperisen, convicted of complicity in the murder of prisoners, following an appeal by the Geneva prosecutor’s office, his lawyer reported this Saturday.
First modification: 09/30/2023 – 11:03
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Sperisen, who has Swiss and Guatemalan nationality, was director of the National Civil Police of Guatemala, where he left in 2007 to settle in Switzerland, in the home of his father, who was ambassador to the World Trade Organization.
“The release of Mr. Sperisen scheduled for Monday will not take place due to the suspension ordered by the Court of Criminal Appeals following an appeal by the prosecution,” lawyer Florian Baier told AFP, confirming a report from the television network. local Léman Bleu.
“It is very difficult for the affected person, his wife, his children and his loved ones,” added the lawyer.
A Geneva court on Thursday ordered the “suspension of the execution of the sentence” pending the Federal Court – Switzerland’s highest judicial instance – to rule on the recent ruling of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR).
On June 13, the European court based in Strasbourg condemned Switzerland for the lack of impartiality of a judge who ruled on the Sperisen case.
According to the Court, the judge’s observations made in October 2017 “exceeded the declaration of a simple suspicion.”
Sperisen was arrested in Geneva in 2012 and has always maintained his innocence.
Swiss justice sentenced him for the first time in 2014 to life imprisonment, but three years later the Federal Court annulled the sentence after considering the assessment of some of his evidence “arbitrary” and “incomplete.”
After five years in prison, Sperisen was provisionally released with an electronic bracelet in September 2017, pending a new trial.
In 2018, the Geneva justice system finally sentenced him to 15 years in prison for complicity in the murder of seven inmates in 2006 during an operation to regain control of the Pavón prison. The Federal Court confirmed this conviction in 2019.
© 2023 AFP
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