The Criminal Chamber of the Court of Justice dismissed the proposal to annul the sentence imposed on three officials of the Bolivarian National Police accused of mistreating two inmates.
In this case, the convicted uniformed officers are: Marianella Celene Calzadilla Vitiello, Carlos Emilio Vera Tamoy and Heyris Inocencia Barrera Guzmán, according to sentence 189 drafted by magistrate Elsa Gómez.
The events occurred in the Sucre parish, Libertador municipality (Caracas), during the month of August 2019. It all began with the arrest of Mirtha Lucía Tovar Rangel and Arelys Yadira Sequera, on the grounds that they had full-blown music in a car. volume.
These officials handcuffed Sequera with strong pressure, knocked her to the ground and dragged her by the hair, according to the investigation of the Public Prosecutor’s Office 117.
This deprived of liberty was taken to the police station located in Ruperto Lugo, La Pastora parish, Caracas, where they did not allow her to make calls to her relatives and lawyers. And when they were to transfer her to the Palace of Justice in Caracas, they sat her in a part of the patrol car that had spilled battery acid, causing a burn on her left leg, according to the medical report from the Vicente Salias Military Hospital.
Upon being released, the victim reported the incident, and as a result, seven police officers were arrested. In addition to Calzadilla, Vera and Barrera, Ernesto José Torrealba Capitillo, Eduik Yostner Sayago Arias, Luis Enrique Cuicas Fernández and José Manuel Chirinos Pérez were captured for this act.
These seven officials were charged on November 22, 2019 before the 24th Control Court of Caracas for the crime of inhuman treatment. The court ordered to prosecute them in freedom, says the sentence.
The trial against the police officers took place between January 17 and July 8, 2022. At the end of the oral and public debate, the 30th Trial Court of Caracas sentenced Calzadilla, Barrera and Vera to 13 years in prison as co-authors of the crime. crime of cruel treatment to the detriment of Mirtha Tovar and Arelys Sequera. While Ernesto José Torrealba Capetillo was sentenced to 3 years in prison for committing the crime of inhuman treatment.
The lawyers for these officials appealed the sentence, but the Court of Appeals of Caracas declared the appeal inadmissible, the sentence refers to.
Subsequently, they went to the Criminal Chamber to request the annulment of the sentences and that a new trial be held. For the magistrates, the reasons that encouraged the group of lawyers to carry out such an approach were not clear.
The Criminal Chamber even detected that the defense of the police officers went the wrong way to reverse the sentence. Instead, the magistrates determined that the defense lawyers of the group of police officers “denoted once again their disagreement with the ruling of the court of first instance”, a situation that did not qualify to be considered in an appeal.
“Additionally, the appellant reveals that the purpose of his complaint, beyond warning of an alleged vice committed by the Court of Appeals, is the claim to hold a new trial, which he exposes without consideration,” the magistrates argued. at the time of dismissing the complaints, thus leaving the conviction against the police unscathed.
The video gave them away
Four agents of the municipal police of Valencia (Carabobo) were charged with the crimes of cruel treatment and unlawful deprivation of liberty, reported the attorney general, Tarek William Saab, on his twitter account. The accused uniformed men are identified as Miguel Rodríguez, Leonardo Pernet, Wilson Galicia and José García. These officials detained a person in front of his youngest daughter and wife, who recorded the procedure.
The material was disseminated on May 18, which prompted the Public Prosecutor’s Office to appoint the 28th Prosecutor for Human Rights to investigate the incident. The video shows that the police handcuff the man from a fence and announce that they will take him into custody.
