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On June 13, 2014, a month before Andrés Felipe Arias was sentenced by the Supreme Court of Justice for the Agro Ingreso Seguro corruption case, the former minister of agriculture left the country for the United States.
On July 17 of that month, the Criminal Chamber of the sentenced him to 17 years and four months in prison, for which he ordered his capture. From that moment on, Arias had become a fugitive from justice.
On August 27, 2014, the Court ordered that the necessary procedures be carried out to complete the extradition of Arias to Colombia and that an international arrest be issued.
(Also read: Reasons for the Prosecutor’s Office and Attorney General’s Office to ask to confirm Arias’s sentence)
For those facts Arias was captured on August 24, 2016 in Miami and several events happened until the authorities of that country extradited him to Colombia on July 12, 2019.
After returning to the country and being held in the North Canton of Bogotá, the Second Court for the Execution of Penalties and Security Measures of Bogotá studied a request made by the defense so that Arias the time he had been detained in Colombia and in the United States was recognized within his sentence.
(Read: Supreme Court admits challenge of Andrés Felipe Arias).
This is how the court recognized that in Colombia he was imprisoned from July 26, 2011 until June 14, 2013, when the Superior Court of Bogotá released him. Then he recognized him as detention time a period from August 24, 2016 -when he was captured in Miami- until November 17 of that year, when he was released on bail in the United States.
The last period of detention that the court recognized him was that of September 28, 2017, when he was captured again by the US authorities until today.
However, Andrés Felipe Arias had requested that he be recognized within his detention time -to deduct from his sentence- the time you managed to get bail in the United States, that is, from November 18, 2016 to September 27, 2017: 10 months and 9 days.
(Also: The revelations of the full ruling on Andrés Felipe Arias).
According to the former minister, that time should be counted as a period of detention because the conditions he had to access bail were those of maintaining a home confinement in the United States, with electronic monitoring from 9 at night to 6 in the morning . According to his defense, regardless of the name of the freedom granted to him in North America, the demands they made could lead him to consider his release on bail as house arrest, They demanded that he obtain a permit to work, imposed electronic surveillance on him, ordered a curfew and confinement in his home.
The Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice has just confirm the decisions that refused to recognize that time as a detention.
The high court assures that although it is true that the time that a person is detained abroad on account of the extradition request must be paid for the fulfillment of the sentence that was imposed, the same does not happen with bail because, for the high court, this United States mechanism cannot be compared to a house arrest.
(In other news: Commander of FF. MM. To respond by bombing where 8 children died).
“The general characteristics of home detention, contrasted with those that international doctrine attributes to bail, indicate that they are dissimilar legal figures insofar as they have different criminal nature and political objectives,” the Supreme Court affirmed.
The general particularities of home detention contrasted with those that international doctrine attributes to bail, indicate that they are dissimilar legal figures
The Court told Arias that in Colombia house arrest has to do with the decision a judge makes to send a person to serve his sentence at home, after verifying that he meets the requirements established by law. On the other hand, bail – which is a foreign figure – points out the high court, “It is a monetary, mortgage guarantee” to ensure that a person will appear at the different stages of the criminal process in which he is linked.
For this reason, the Court points out, the house for jail and bail that is applied in the United States are not equivalent, despite the fact that they coincide in some mobility limitations.
So things, although justice recognizes that Arias has already paid at least 5 years and three months of effective detention of his sentence of more than 17 years (regardless of the time of redemption), he will not recognize the 10 months and 9 days in which he achieved bail in the United States.
For now, Arias remains detained in the North Canton of Bogotá. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court of Justice – in a room made up of justices Gerson Chaverra Castro, Fabio Ospitia Garzón and Whanda Fernández León – will have to define the challenge that the former minister presented against his sentence, to establish whether he maintains his sentence, modifies it or the grave.
So far, both the Attorney General’s Office and the Attorney General’s Office have asked to maintain the sentence against the former minister, although the Public Ministry asked to rethink the amount of the penalty.
JUSTICE
Twitter: @JusticiaET
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