SANTO DOMINGO.- The Public Ministry stressed this Monday that all those accused of the murder of the lawyer Yuniol Ramírez Ferreras and for committing acts of corruption registered in the Metropolitan Office of Bus Services (OMSA) during the management of Manuel Rivas must be sentenced.
Court Attorney Mirna Ortiz, Litigation Coordinator of the Specialized Attorney for the Persecution of Administrative Corruption (Pepca), said that the Public Ministry fulfilled the promise made to society to bring to justice those accused of committing the horrible murder of Yuniol Ramirez.
“That has been fulfilled by the Public Ministry today,” he said. “More than four months of arduous litigation in court, countless testimonial, documentary and expert evidence that established the participation of each of the accused in the process,” he added.
The Second Collegiate Court of the National District, made up of judges Claribel Nivar Arias, Yissel Soto and Clara Sobeida Castillo, will issue the ruling on September 8, starting at 2:00 in the afternoon.
“Remember that the judges do not rule according to the arguments of the parties, the judges rule according to the evidence and evidence we have presented and we are sure of obtaining a conviction,” Ortiz told journalists who interviewed her after the hearing on Monday concluded. .
Regarding the defendant Argenis Contreras, the Pepca Litigation coordinator said that “we all know his story, a defendant who a few hours after committing the act buys a flight expressly, flees from justice, but never thought that the arm of justice would come to him.”
He pointed out that the accused was brought to the country, submitted to the action of justice and will be sentenced to the 30-year sentence requested by the Public Ministry, as well as all the accused in this process.
For the defendant Argenis Contreras, identified as the material author of the kidnapping and murder of the lawyer and university professor Ramírez Ferreras, the Public Ministry requested the maximum sentence of 30 years in prison.
He also requested 20 years in prison for the accused Manuel Rivas, Faustino Rosario, Víctor Ravelo Campos and José Antonio Mercado Blanco and five years for Jorge Luis Abreu, Heidy Carolina Peña and Lilian Francisca Suárez Jáquez.
The accusing body, in addition, requested the imposition of fines and the confiscation of the assets obtained by the accused as a result of their criminal activity.
The Public Ministry began on Wednesday, May 11, the reading of the accusation that contains the charges and the evidence of the case, concluding with the presentation of more than 60 pieces of evidence with which it claimed to demonstrate the connection of the accused with the crime and the acts of corruption in the OMSA.
The murder, committed in October 2017, is linked to the acts of administrative corruption that occurred in the government transport entity that was directed by Rivas since August 2012.
Ramírez Ferreras, who presided over the National Convergence of Lawyers (CONA), was found dead with a concrete block tied to his neck by a chain, in a stream in Hato Nuevo, Santo Domingo Oeste.
After the fact, Argenis Contreras fled to the United States, where he was captured and three years later handed over to the country after the efforts of the current management of the Public Ministry.
