From the Barbadillo prison, and using tricks, the former coup leader Pedro Castillo gave a long interview to the Spanish outlet El Salto despite the fact that it was never authorized. His statements are full of lies.
“I’m still president,” Castillo assured the journalist as if he were living in a parallel reality, despite the fact that he was vacated by Congress after carrying out a coup on December 7. But when asked why he did it, Castillo replied: “I never wanted to subvert Peruvian institutions. I wanted to get closer to the people.” And at another time he points out that the “self-coup” is “a discourse that the right has created.” As the lie has short legs, there are testimonies from the actors of the moment that deny it. The police chief, for example, confirmed that that day Castillo ordered him to “close Congress (…) and intervene with the National Prosecutor.” That is to say, it was a coup d’état and he ordered it to be executed. That it hasn’t worked out is something else. His then Minister of the Interior, Willy Huerta, now says that the message to the nation announcing the dictatorial measures was “an illegal act.”
The flight to the embassy
The ex-president lied again and denied that he was trying to flee to the Mexican embassy, but that he was only going in the car to leave his family at the diplomatic headquarters. “I was not running away,” Castillo emphasized. However, the president of Mexico, Andrés López Obrador, confirmed that after carrying out the self-coup, the still Peruvian president called him to let him know that he would go to the Mexican embassy. “He spoke here to the office so that they would notify me that he was going to the Embassy,” López Obrador assured the day after the coup d’état.
Arbitrary detention
After lying about his escape, Castillo lied again. This time he affirmed that there was no prosecutor at the time of his arrest and assured that the representative of the Public Ministry arrived the following day. First, Castillo was arrested in flagrante delicto for the crime of rebellion, a situation that did not warrant the presence of a prosecutor. Secondly, it is false that a prosecutor just arrived the next day, given that the same afternoon as the arrest, the National Prosecutor, Patricia Benavides, and the prosecutor Marita Barreto went to the Prefecture where the former president was detained to carry out the proceedings. corresponding.
LOOK: Pedro Castillo on the coup he perpetrated: “I wanted to get closer to the people”
Attack and Victimization
After attacking President Dina Boluarte on several occasions (I did not know the kind of person she was, it was during this time that I realized the evil of this woman / She was and is calculating, ambitious / She cried not to be removed from office as a minister/ She only pretended to be a democrat until now her true personality is evident: dictator), the empty ex-president victimized herself and assured that they did not let him govern. However, he fails to mention that during his disastrous 17-month tenure, there were more than 80 ministerial changes and several corruption scandals were revealed. Likewise, Castillo states that he “wanted to allocate more budget for the purchase of fertilizers,” but during his government four purchase attempts failed.
The lawyer and political analyst, Eduardo Herrera, pointed out to Peru21 that the former president “is a cynic.” In addition, he considered that the former president “tries to justify something that is unjustifiable but that sounds good.”
Pedro Castillo will remain in custody for 18 months and will have to respond to INPE for having given an interview despite being prohibited.
