Martinelli defense claims rights violations

The defense team of former Panama president  Ricardo Martinelli continues with multiple motions seen by observers as delaying tactics in his trial for spying on opponents and embezzlement as he approaches his second year in detention.

  The defense has requested a new audience for the affectation of human rights, but on this occasion, it does so within the complaint filed by the former president against the government minister, Carlos Rubio, for the alleged commission of the crime against individual liberty reports La Prensa.

Jessica Canto, of Martinelli’s team of high priced lawyers, said that initially the hearing was scheduled for May 14, within the process that is followed by her to his client for crimes against the inviolability of secrecy and the right to privacy and embezzlement, but that he desisted from it. Canto explained that now a new hearing is being managed, but inside the folder of the complaint filed against Rubio.

Martinelli’s lawyers denounced the minister for some acts that qualify as an attack against human rights, including keeping him confined in a cell and not allowing him to interact with the rest of the inmates of El Renacer Prison, which ere he entered on June 11. 2018, when he was extradited from the United States.

Prosecutor  Kenia Purcell declared herself unable to hear the complaint filed by Martinelli and sent it to the Superior Prosecutor’s Office for Primary Care for due process.

Carlos Herrera Morán, a plaintiff in the suit against Martinelli for alleged espionage and embezzlement, considered that this is one more strategy of his defense to delay the oral trial.

The defense also filed two constitutional guarantees, objecting to decisions of Judge Roberto Tejeira, also with the purpose -according to Herrera Morán- of delaying the case.