A Peruvian appeals court ratified in the last hours the order of 36 months prison for former President Pedro Castillo, for the alleged crime of corruption.
Castillo, who has been detained since December after trying to dissolve Congress, must remain incarcerated until December 2025while the prosecution advances with the investigation and decides his eventual call to trial.
“The Permanent Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court, chaired by César San Martín Castro, ratifies 36 months of pre-trial detention issued against former President Pedro Castillo Terrones, investigated for the alleged crime of criminal organization and others”reported the Judiciary on the social network Twitter.
On March 10, in a virtual hearing, Judge Juan Carlos Checkley ordered the second preventive sanction against Castillo, after having dictated him 18 months for the attempt to dissolve Congress and rule by decree.
After his unsuccessful maneuver on December 7, Castillo, 53, was dismissed and taken that day to the Barbadillo prison, a small prison for high officials inside the headquarters of the Special Operations Directorate of the Police, east of Lima.
His fall deepened the political crisis in Peru with protests that were harshly repressed and left more than fifty dead. Castillo, a teacher and union leader from Cajamarca, in the northwest of the country, denies corruption charges and maintains that he is “unfairly kidnapped”.
The prosecutor’s office accuses the ex-president of having led a network of corruption, money laundering and the awarding of public works contracts from the presidency. Two of his former ministers were arrested and they comply with pretrial detention for the same case.
The former Peruvian president, who had been elected in 2021 to rule until 2026, was ousted when he had been in power for 17 months. After his arrest, The until then Vice President Dina Boluarte took office, who veered to the right and unleashed demonstrations with demands for his resignation and the call for new elections.
