Varela revokes Martinelli pardons, thanks activists

PRESIDENT JUAN CARLOS VARELA has revoked the 355 pardons granted by the former president Ricardo Martinelli in the last six days of his management and has praised praised the note that a group of lawyers deliveredd to the Presidency in early July, seeking the revocation .

The statement comes  in  the August 14 Executive Order 472, in which Varela and Minister of Government, Milton Henriquez, overuled pardons issued by Martinelli and Alma Cortés, acting as a government minister in charge.

Varela and Henriquez acknowledged the lawyers request  “in the exercise of the right of petition enshrined in Article 41 of the Constitution.”

Lawyers and activists Giulia De Sanctis and Magaly Castillo, chief executive of the Citizens Alliance for Justice personally delivered notes on July 8.

 The group said that Law No. 38 of 2000 “states that pardons may be revoked because they were issued without jurisdiction to do so.”

The revocation of the pardons came the same day a group of civil society organizations complained at a hearing of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), which met in Mexico, and in which Castillo  participated

After hearing the complaint, at the hearing one of the members of the Commission indicated that the pardons left many crimes unpunished.

At that hearing it was recalled that the pardons involving over 100 victims of different crimes, not one of them political.