This Wednesday, November 26, 2025 will be a key day in the recent history of Peru. The Judiciary has planned for that day to hand down a sentence to former presidents Martín Vizcarra Cornejo (March 2028-November 2020) and Pedro Castillo Terrones (July 2021 – December 2022), in two public hearings that will take place simultaneously and will be broadcast on JusticiaTV channels and La República streaming platforms.
The verdict for the attempted coup d’état on December 7, 2022, led by Castillo Terrones, will be read starting at 9:00 in the morning, from the judicial headquarters located in the Special Operations Directorate (DIROES) of the National Police, near the Barbadillo prison, in Ate, where the former president has been in preventive detention for almost three years.
The hearings of this trial began on March 4 of this year and are in charge of the Special Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice, made up of provisional supreme judges José Neyra Flores (president), Iván Guerrero López and Norma Carbajal Chávez (speaker and director of debates). Due to the nature of the case, the hearings have had a high political component that will have an impact on the final verdict.
Along with Pedro Castillo, the responsibility of former ministers Betssy Chávez Chino, Aníbal Torres Vásquez, Willy Huerta Olivas and National Police officers Manuel Lozada Morales, Justo Venero Mellado and Eder Infanzón Gómez will be established.
Last Friday, the preparatory investigation judge of the Supreme Court, Juan Carlos Checkley Soria, issued a preventive detention order against Chávez Chino, who took refuge and obtained political asylum in the Mexican embassy in Lima, where he is currently located. The other defendants complete a simple appearance and are free.
Martin Vizcarra
Meanwhile, the sentence of former President Vizcarra Cornejo will be heard from the headquarters of the National Criminal Court, a few meters from Plaza San Martín and the National Election Jury. Former President Vizcarra is free with restrictions.
In addition, to establish his responsibility and penalty, the judges will decide whether the sentence is carried out immediately or await the appeal to the higher court. The Vizcarra trial began more than a year ago, on October 28, 2024, by the Fourth Collegiate Criminal Court, made up of judges Fernanda Isabel Ayasta Nassif, Giovanni Félix Palma and Andy Rodríguez Domínguez.
Martín Vizcarra is tried for alleged bribery in his performance as regional governor of Moquegua (2011-2014) in the awarding of contracts for the Lomas de Ilo and Moquegua Hospital works. The prosecution is asking for a 15-year prison sentence for him. The former president has pleaded innocent and denies having coordinated and received payments from the directors of Obrainsa and ICCSA, who took advantage of the effective collaboration.
Due to the same facts and with the same evidence, former president Martín Vizcarra faces another judicial process, pending a public trial, for the crime of collusion, concertation to direct contracts. The Supreme Court has said that it will be up to the judges in charge of this second court to determine if there is a similarity in both cases and the second trial is no longer appropriate.
The sentence
The sentence can be condemnatory or acquittal. In the case of the coup d’état, Pedro Castillo has denied having committed the crime of rebellion, since he did not carry out an uprising in arms that requires the description of the crime. Castillo says that he only read the proclamation of December 7 as a political act against the Congress of the Republic.
In the last hearing of allegations, the former president told the judges that he is the only one responsible for what happened on December 7. The prosecution has asked for a 25-year prison sentence for the former president for the crime of rebellion, but a few months ago, by majority, the court announced that it would disassociate itself from that accusation to consider the crime of conspiracy to rebel, which has a penalty of up to 10 years in prison.
The judges also refused to archive the process against Betssy Chávez, after she obtained political asylum in Mexico, in such a way that they will also decide her responsibility and eventual sentence. By not applying the figure of contumacy, the court can issue the sentence in absentia.
Political aspirations
The trial of former president Martín Vizcarra is based on the testimony of effective collaborators, the businessmen who would have made the payments, and their employees, witnesses of the eventual movement of the money. The prosecution has not been able to provide additional concrete evidence that the former regional governor received the money. Precisely for this aspect, the process was divided between the classification of bribery (bribery) and collusion (agreement).
Vizcarra insists on his innocence and declares himself a victim of political persecution derived, he says, from the closure of Congress on September 30, 2019. Martín Vizcarra intended to register as a candidate for the first vice presidency for the Peru Primero political party to participate in the 2026 elections, but the ONPE rejected the candidacy when he found himself disqualified by parliament from holding public office.
The Peru Primero team is headed by his brother Mario Vizcarra Cornejo as a candidate for the Presidency and is complemented by Judith Carla Mendoza Díaz as second vice president. Polls place Mario Vizcarra as third in voter preferences, at this point in the electoral process.
For his part, Pedro Castillo seeks to register as a candidate for the Senate of the Republic for Together for Peru. Castillo is not disqualified by Congress and the ruling in the first instance would not prevent him from being a candidate, although if elected – if he serves a prison sentence – he will not be able to take his place in the future senate.
Both cases have a high political content, in the facts, in the development of the hearings, in the evidentiary issue, and the same will be with the sentence. An acquittal verdict will increase the pressures of the Government Pact that controls the Executive and Legislature, on the judicial system.
