Stressed Martinelli moved from jail to hospital
Ex-president Ricardo Martinelli is in intensive care in Santo Tomas public hospital suffering from high blood pressure hours after being returned to El Renacer prison.
Ángel Cedeño, the hospital director said: “We have him hospitalized in the Intensive Care Unit, in stable condition and in the same room where Manuel Antonio Noriega was.”
He pointed out that Martinelli had a big stress condition and that stress is the worst enemy of blood pressure.
Martinelli, extradited from the US after a year in a Miami detention center is facing trial for illegal interception of communications of 150 politicians. journalists and businessmen, Judge Harry Diaz acting as a prosecutor, is asking for a 21-year jail term.
In a two-hour hearing, on Monday evening June 11 Martinelli claimed that his rights were violated as he reeled off a list of medical problems and demanded that he be moved to a private hospital Supreme Court judge of Guarantees, Jerónimo Mejía, ordered him to remain in detention at El Renacer prison.
Martinelli who on his arrival at El Renacer, waved and shouted from a barred window to media over a 100 meters away, and arrived at the court in an upbeat mood giving a v sign with upraised arms to waiting supporters.
He told the judge: “All my rights have been violated here. I have serious heart problems, I suffer from tachycardia, you can see me well, but at any moment I can get stuck, I have serious problems to urinate and I have glaucoma, I probably have prostate cancer “
The judge cross-questioned a doctor produced by the defense, who had examined Martinelli only once at the prison,
After Martinelli’s pleas seemed to have failed he relapsed with his head in his hands and appeared to be in tears before being sent back to El Renacer.
But at about 10:30 at night a tweet from the lawyer Sidney Sitton alerted media that Mejía had backed down ordering that Martinelli be taken to the public hospital.
Mejía had quoted the report o four doctors who evaluated Martinelli, after his arrival in the country earlier in the day and ordered that he be evaluated by doctors from the Institute of Legal Medicine.
