A Peruvian appeals court recently ratified the 36-month prison order for former President Pedro Castillo, for the alleged crime of corruption.
Castillo, who has been detained since December after having tried to dissolve Congress, must remain in jail until December 2025, while the prosecution advances with the investigation and decides his eventual summons to trial.
“The Permanent Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court, chaired by César San Martín Castro, ratifies 36 months of preventive detention issued against former president Pedro Castillo Terrones, investigated for the alleged crime of criminal organization and others,” the Judiciary reported on the social network Twitter.
On March 10, in a virtual hearing, Judge Juan Carlos Checkley ordered the second preventive sanction against Castillo, after having given him 18 months for the attempt to dissolve Congress and rule by decree.
After his unsuccessful maneuver on December 7, Castillo, 53, was dismissed and taken that day to the Barbadillo prison, a small prison for high-ranking officials inside the headquarters of the Special Operations Directorate of the Police, east of Lima.
His fall deepened the political crisis in Peru with protests that were harshly repressed and left more than fifty dead.
Castillo, a teacher and union leader from Cajamarca in the northwest of the country, denies the corruption charges, saying he is “unfairly kidnapped.”
The prosecution accuses Castillo of having led a network of corruption, money laundering and the awarding of public works contracts from the presidency.
Two of its former ministers were arrested and are serving pretrial detention for the same case, the AFP news agency reported.
The former Peruvian president, who had been elected in 2021 to rule until 2026, was ousted when he had been in power for 17 months.
After his arrest, the until then Vice President Dina Boluarte took office, who turned the Executive to the right and unleashed demonstrations with demands for his resignation and call for new elections.
Source: Ambito
