Judges said pressured to favor Martinelli
Former Supreme Court president Judge José Ayú Prado is accused by plaintiffs in the illegal wiretapping trial of Ricardo Martinelli of pressuring judges to favor the former president.
The Plenary of the Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ) declined to judge the case on Friday, December 7 and will send it to the ordinary courts (SPA)
Rosendo Rivera, a spokesperson for the plaintiffs, said at a Tuesday press conference; “We Know from internal sources that Judge Ayú Prado continues to exert pressure and continues with a group of magistrates bought by Mr. Martinelli and appointed by this government, who have made an alliance to favor the cause of Mr. Martinelli,”, Rivera is victim of the wiretaps and a private accuser in the process,
Fast ascent
Ayú Prado was directly appointed by Martinelli, first as Attorney General, where he was accused of involvement with altering a witness declaration in a case involving the Martinelli, High Spirit account at the scandal-plagued Financial Pacific brokerage.
Soon after he was appointed to the Supreme Court and became its president Earlier this year he abruptly resigned as president of the court after having announced he would seek re-election. While he was the senior magistrate he became the most traveled judge in the history of the court.
The only two magistrates appointed by the government of Juan Carlos Varela are Ángela Russo and Cecilio Cedalise who voted to make Ayu Prado Court president on the day they took office, Varela also appointed Asunción Alonso, substitute for Ayú Prado.
The three voted in favor of declining the jurisdiction of the case against Martinelli to a court of the accusatory penal system (SPA), four days before the scheduled date for the start of the oral trial before the plenary of the Supreme Court
The plaintiffs also questioned the role of the presiding magistrate (interim) Hernán De León who was earlier fingered by the current Attorney General of having confessed to “being taped.”
“Throughout all the hearings he conducted, there was a lack of knowledge of what the SPA is; We who are litigating lawyers noticed the nervousness, we noticed the lack of knowledge of the criminal system, because he is a magistrate who comes from the Civil Chamber “Rivera said, in the presence of other plaintiff victims, such as Mitchell Doens and Balbina Herrera, along with Nicomedes Castillo and Carlos Herrera Delegado, lawyers for Juan Carlos Navarro and Mauro Zúñiga, among others, said Rivera.
“It was a strategy of judge José Ayú Prado to be behind without being blamed for any type of responsibility, to place Judge Hernán de León who, as president of the CSJ, who has also been involved in scandal in this case and in other cases, not giving his opinion to the face of the country, not explaining his actions for which he is being accused and thus achieving his objectives, ” Rivera added.
“We want to denounce that Ayu Prado along with magistrate Luis Ramón Fábrega is pulling the strings to rattle the case of Martinelli. We do not agree with the decision of the Court to pass the case to the ordinary justice but we will abide by the decision,” said. the autonomous lawyer of the case, Rivera.
He said he will ask that the hearings be public so that citizens have the certainty of knowing .how it justice is served
