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Assembly member will be investigated for visiting witness processed in the case of Correa
Posted On 04 Oct 2018
Ecuadornews:
The Ecuadorian legislator Sofía Espín will be investigated by a commission of the National Assembly for having visited in prison an indicted defendant and witness in a kidnapping case in which the former president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, is accused.
This was decided today by the Legislative Administration Council (CAL) of the Ecuadorian Parliament, accepting a complaint filed by Assemblyman Esteban Bernal, from the conservative opposition group CREO
The Assembly announced on Twitter that “the CAL described the complaint filed by Assemblyman Esteban Bernal for the alleged incompatibility of Sofía Espín’s functions,” and that “a multiparty commission will be created to analyze the case.”
With six votes in favor and one against, the CAL adopted that decision to clarify the circumstances of the visit that Espín -of the group calling itself Citizen Revolution and related to Correa- made last September 24th in the prison where the former prisoner is serving as a preventive prison.
The defendant, who assumed her authorship as the material author of the facts together with another intelligence agent in exchange for collaborating with the Ecuadorian Justice, is detained while the indictment phase is aired in the case of kidnapping of the ex-politician Fernando Balda.
Occurred in 2012 in Colombia and frustrated by the police of that country after an hour and a half of persecution, the kidnapping is attributed to the Ecuadorian intelligence services and according to Balda, who exercises the particular accusation in the process, under the intellectual authorship of the then President Correa.
Last week the Prosecutor’s Office presented its allegations against four alleged suspects, including Falcón, and the national judge handling the case, Daniella Camacho, is studying whether they are brought to trial.
In the case, Correa, who resides in Belgium since July 2017, the ex-agent Raúl Chicaiza, and the former secretary of intelligence, Pablo Romero, the last one in Spain, also appear as defendants.
In one of the hearings, Balda reported that Espín and a lawyer from Correa’s legal team, Yadira Cadena, had visited Falcón to try to influence her testimony.
The complaint cost the post to the head of the women’s detention center in Quito and the Deputy Minister of Justice of Ecuador, Liliana Guzmán, said that the visits were not authorized.
Espín has repeatedly assured since her prison visit was known, that she has not committed any infraction and that she entered the jail as does the entire public that visits the inmates in the center.
Correa, on which there is an Ecuadorian petition for the arrest of Interpol for failure to comply with precautionary measures, denounces being subjected to political persecution and lack of judicial independence in Ecuador. (I)
