President orders review of Martinelli pardons

PRESIDENT Juan Carlos Varela has appointed a team of lawyers to analyze and determine the validity of each of the 345 pardons granted by Ricardo Martinelli. The announcement was made on Monday, July 7. Earlier in the day the The Citizen’s Alliance for Justice had mounted a demonstration requesting the review and parents of youths who were burned to death while police looked on, met with Deputy Minister of the Presidency Augusto Arosemena .

He said that concerns have been expressed from the families of the five children who died in a fire at a youth detention facility over the pardons granted to police officers called to trial in that case. Some of the charges were for murder or attempted murder.

“In this case we know the impact that the situation caused to not only the families of the five young people who died, but to the whole of Panamanian society. A fact that has been claimed as one of the worst episodes of violation of human rights in our system of Justice,” said Arosemena after a meeting with those affected.

The official pledged to keep them informed on the course of the petition to revoke the pardons reports la Prensa.

The alliance has asked for the pardons to be revoked, saying that some of the beneficiaries were accused of homicide, human rights violations and crimes against the administration, but not yet convicted reports La Prensa.

“The president was not competent to enact pardons for those who had not been convicted,” wrote the alliance in a letter addressed to Varela.

Paragraph 12 of article 184 of the Constitution says that the President of the Republic is competent to enact “pardons for political offences, reduce penalties and grant parole to inmates convicted of common crimes”.

Among other receiving pardons were the police officers involved in the death of two children at a checkpoint in San Carlos and those allegedly involved in the flooding of the neighborhood of Prados del Este.