The defense of one of the defendants in the network Cattleya assured this Friday that the women who were allegedly sexually exploited by the members of the alleged criminal organization are withdrawing the complaints.
When asked what the reasons could be, the lawyer Wilkin Sánchez Aguavivas, defender of the defendant Melvin Valentín (who is accused of transporting the victims), said he did not know them.
“It is rumored that out of the 80 victims there are no longer 80, today there are 22 that they were supposed to see in the interview, and only five went down, we do not know why the victims are voluntarily withdrawing from the file,” he said. .
What the jurist refers to with the interviews, is the advance payment of evidence requested by the Public Ministry so that the victims are interviewed by closed circuit (or Gessel Camera) to be presented as evidence in the case.
Regarding his client, the lawyer said that Melvin Valentín is a person “who is simply a taxi driver, who has nothing to do with this process.”
Earlier, several of the defendants, when they were transferred to the courtroom, said that the Public Ministry is influencing women and threatening them so that they say “what they want.”
“These women were always free, they came and went, the Prosecutor’s Office is bribing them to make a file, they have them kidnapped so that they do what they want, if they do not say what they want they threaten to give them five and 10 years” said one of the defendants.
For next Friday, Judge Pablo Imbert, of the National District’s Permanent Attention Office, will hear the coercive measure hearing for the 18 defendants, against whom the Public Ministry will request the imposition of preventive detention.
The Specialized Prosecutor’s Office Against Illicit Smuggling of Migrants and Trafficking in Persons (PETT) has said that the prison will guarantee that José Miguel Michel Guridis, Daniel Enrique Inirio Abreu and José Soriano Rosario (a) Cirujano, alleged leaders of this network, and the others involved, do not withdraw from the process.
Regarding the case, the head of the PETT, Yoanna Bejarán, has said that they have a solid file, which consists of some 200 pages and in which, she added, there is sufficient evidence against the alleged members of the women’s trafficking network. from South America who were brought to the country to be sexually exploited.
Sergeant Dionicio Mieses de la Cruz (Dionis), Oscar Wicene, Melvin Valentín Peguero, Cristina González Hernández and María Murillo Vargas are also accused of the case.
Also, Louis Marie Nephtalie, Oliver Arnaud Lewinski, Robert Lee Eleuterio Paniagua, Angélica Quintero Niño, Marie Fokina, Alejandro Batista Bustamante (the Cat), Ramón Oviedo, Carlos Campusano Díaz and Braulio Manuel.
The process also involves the Caribe and Oscar hotels, in the Gascue sector, of the National District, and Coco Real, in Bávaro, Punta Cana, La Altagracia province, against which the Public Ministry requests that the temporary closure be ordered.
