Judge Amauri Martínez ordered last night the cessation of preventive detention in favor of the former Attorney General of the Republic, Jean Alain Rodríguez, by imposing house arrest and an economic guarantee of 50 million pesos.
Martínez made his decision known with a few minutes to go before 1:00 in the morning, after at 6:15 in the afternoon he ordered the closure of the debates in the hearing where the request for variation of the measure that weighs against the ex-prosecutor.
Jean Alain Rodríguez, the main defendant in the Medusa case, had been in preventive detention for 18 months, had asked the judge of the Third Investigating Court of the National District, Amauri Martínez, to allow him to prove his innocence in freedom as mandated by the Constitution.
When exhausting one turn during the hearing in which the request for a variation of the preventive detention that weighs against him was known, Rodríguez told Judge Martínez that he does not represent a flight risk and that in the 18 months that he has in preventive detention, his defense has never delayed the process.
“I am facing the greatest power that has been seen against a human being in our country. All the strength of a Public Ministry is focused on me. It is the Executive Branch, because it is not the State, based in Mexico, but I have the Constitution,” Rodríguez said.
He argued that this case is about the entire State against Jean Alain Rodríguez.
He stated that he has the Constitution of the Republic in his hands and that it is in his favor.
“The Constitution that says that I, you and all of us who are here are Dominicans,” he said.
The ex-prosecutor also responded to the statements of the representative of the Public Ministry, Yeni Berenice Reynoso, who affirms that there are three witnesses in the case under protection, due to threats allegedly made by the ex-prosecutor.
“Magistrate, you don’t have a piece of paper and you won’t have one to say that I threatened any witness,” he added.
Flight risk persists
The deputy attorney general and head of the General Directorate of Persecution of the Public Ministry, Yeni Berenice Reynoso, reiterated that the danger of flight persists, because the conditions for the cessation of preventive detention of the former attorney general of the Republic do not exist. She pointed out that Judge Martínez’s decision will be considered by the Public Prosecutor’s Office in the next few hours.
At the hearing, Reynoso assured that Jean Alain Rodríguez tried to bribe witnesses with up to one million pesos so that they would not testify.
In this case, the Public Ministry presented an accusation through a volume of 12,274 pages, accompanied by more than 3,500 pieces of evidence, which include more than 400 witnesses.
The indictment in the Medusa case was filed against 41 individuals and 22 companies.
Says Jean Alain offered a million to witness
During the hearing of the cessation of preventive detention, Yeni Berenice Reynoso accused him of obstructing the judicial process in various ways, one of which was the alleged offer of one million pesos to the witness Rainieri Sánchez Medina. Reynoso said that the million pesos was offered as long as he did not testify against him. “In the case of the witness Luisa Montana, she visited him and that led us to investigate a lawyer from that bar, because there were already multiple complaints of obstruction,” argued the head of the General Directorate of Persecution.
