This Thursday the sentence against the former president will be read Pedro Castillo (PC), former Prime Minister Betssy Chávez and others involved in the coup d’état of December 7, 2022. Andy Carrión, criminal lawyer, analyzes what the judges should consider.
What should the judges consider for the sentence against Pedro Castillo?
Former President Castillo, along with Betssy Chávez, Aníbal Torres and the others involved, face charges of rebellion and, alternatively, conspiracy to rebel. These crimes are the ones that must be resolved this Thursday. There was already a first ruling from the Supreme Court, in the court led by César San Martín, which indicated that it was possible to consider the attempted crime of rebellion and that it was not necessary to take up a weapon, but rather to carry out preparatory acts. But it is still complex.
Why do you say it is complex?
In the criminal field, the term coup d’état does not exist as such, but rather the crime of rebellion. Unfortunately, at that time, the legislator of the Code of the year 91 believed that a coup d’état only took place by taking up arms, but we all know that coups d’état do not necessarily happen that way.
Shouldn’t the issue be evaluated beyond the legal text, looking at history as a whole? For example, the previous statement by his collaborator Salatiel Marrufo that accelerated Castillo’s execution of the coup to protect himself as well.
I would say that Pedro Castillo has deployed these acts first to cover up his own acts of corruption and secondly to try to still protect his role as president of the republic. He himself pointed out, if that day he did not carry out the coup d’état, perhaps the Congress of the Republic would have complied with suspending it.
We are talking about the highest authority in the country, at that time, and who wanted to break the constitutional order. He couldn’t do that.
It wasn’t just anyone. At first we all agreed that this case had to go to trial. There were enough elements that had to be at least discussed in a plenary session like in this situation. That is why the judges suggested that conspiracy to rebel be postulated, because they understand that perhaps there has not really been an uprising in arms, but there has been coordination.
Then, the court must analyze everything as a whole instead of making a purely legal analysis.
Consider the circumstances under which the coup was carried out and I believe that as a result of that fundamental consideration, the judges themselves suggested this alternative imputation of conspiracy to rebel. It was clearly a coup d’état. It is necessary to differentiate the constitutional concepts of the coup d’état that is included in the Constitution and that resulted in the dismissal of the former president, and, on the other hand, the archaic nature of the normative formulation in our Penal Code of the crime of rebellion. So, I think there has to be a contextual interpretation.
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