By Carla Samón Ros |
Lima (EFE).- The former Peruvian president Pedro Castillo tried to carry out a self-coup on December 7 when he felt that he was going to be dismissed hours later by Congress and as a “last letter” when “he had already lost the game”, his lawyer Wilfredo Robles assured EFE.
“On the last occasion he had, because President Pedro Castillo felt sure that (Congress) did have the votes to vacate (remove) him. It is not true that narrative that ‘why did he do this if there were not enough votes?’” Robles assured in an interview with EFE.
The lawyer acknowledges that the former president announced the closure of Congress without it twice denying him confidence, as established by the Constitution -which is why the order issued by the then president is mostly described as an attempted coup d’état- , but considers the order of 18 months of preventive detention against him “worrying”.
His message of December 7, the lawyer maintains, “lacked any effect” because it had not been approved by any Council of Ministers or published in the official newspaper El Peruano, the usual formula for any legal act in the Andean country, despite because, as the prosecution maintains, his orders were unconstitutional as they constituted an attempted coup.
“It was an ineffective act, devoid of all formality and impossible to execute,” insists Robles, who was imprisoned for 11 years for terrorism and then – he assures – was acquitted.
So why did he do it? “It was a political act, an act of vindication of issues that the population demanded of him.”
The “oppressive conditions” that Castillo lives
In Robles’ opinion, Castillo lives “in oppressive conditions and revenge” in the prison where he has been in pretrial detention since December for his failed self-coup, a case in which Justice is “applying a political slogan” in alliance with Congress and the Prosecutor’s Office
From his office in the historic center of Lima, the lawyer explains that the former president is “denied specialized medical attention” and “telephone communication” in the Barbadillo prison, where he also “suffers reprisals” in the form of cutbacks in visits when “messages appear” on his Twitter account.
“The conditions are oppressive, they are for revenge,” says Robles, after mentioning alleged differences in treatment with the other inmate of the same prison, former president Alberto Fujimori, who, he says, has a telephone and “an ambulance at his disposal.”
The lawyer, who is part of Castillo’s technical defense for the investigation opened for rebellion, assures, however, that the rural school teacher is “serene” and “firm” because “he understands that everything that is done against him is, in reality, a lesson against their voters”.
According to Robles, it was because of them that Castillo played his “last card” when he failed in his attempt to order the dissolution of Parliament and announce the establishment of an emergency executive that would govern by decree, the convening of a constituent assembly and the reorganization of the justice system.
“At that moment, his fate being cast, he was interested in transmitting a message to his electorate, to his people, to whom he felt indebted for the issue of the Constituent Assembly and the repudiated Congress,” he affirms.
A “political slogan”
Through some fifty appeals, protections and other resources, Castillo has repeatedly insisted on his request for the Judiciary to annul the preventive prison and the process for rebellion, arguing that the Parliament and the Prosecutor’s Office did not respect his right to a preliminary trial and that the crime for which he is accused implies an armed uprising that, in his case, did not take place.
“The fact that Pedro Castillo has appeared on television reading a message does not qualify for anyone as an armed uprising,” says Robles, before denouncing a kind of conspiracy “between Congress, the Prosecutor’s Office and the judges” that, according to what he says, they are “applying a political slogan”.
“That is why we maintain that Pedro Castillo is a political prisoner (…) and we conclude that as of December 7 in Peru there is no rule of law, there is a dictatorship,” he says.
Trust in international bodies
Robles is convinced that, within the national territory, no one is going to agree with them -for now, no appeal has prospered- and he does not trust the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), which says that it “supports the President Dina Boluarte”.
“That is why we have gone to the United Nations,” he said in relation to the sessions on Peru held at the beginning of March at the UN Human Rights Committee, where “the debate on what is happening was finally put on the table now and with President Pedro Castillo”.
As long as nothing is resolved in his favor, the ex-president will continue in Barbadillo, where he is also serving another 36 months in preventive detention for alleged cases of corruption.
There, the rural teacher sees the days go by between books and a small garden that has “greened” with the planting of “pumpkins, potatoes and chili pepper plants” and has once again used the characteristic Chotano hat, which he abandoned during his administration and which as much sympathy as rejection caused in the electoral campaign.