04/28/2020 - 13:17
- Clarín.com
- Politics
The PRO Board of Directors opposed this Tuesday "emphatically" the idea of releasing prisoners to prevent the spread of the coronavirus in prisons and asked the Executive "to agree" and decide "whose side is" before the diversity of opinions within the Government.
"We strongly oppose the release of prisoners who create risks for society and its victims. Prisoners must serve their sentences and those who have preventive detention continue until the procedural dangers that justify their imprisonment disappear," the statement begins.
In the letter, which is signed by the president of the party, Patricia Bullrich ; as well as those of Federico Angelini, Laura Rodríguez Machado, Eduardo Macchiavelli, Omar De Marchi, Jorge Macri; PRO highlights that "ignoring victims is ignoring the law."
"Let us remember that thanks to the Victims Law that we sanctioned when we were a government, today the judges are obliged to consult them, listen to them and notify them before granting freedom or house arrest to a prisoner. We have already regretted cases where criminals were released and they committed new and aberrant crimes, "he adds.
He continues: "This is going to continue happening, because the Executive has already warned that it has no way of controlling them . They put us all at risk of becoming new victims."
The statement makes special focus on "the position of the Executive" on the issue, assuring that "on the one hand they generate all the epidemiological protocols to tackle the pandemic in the prison environment (SPF) and say that they are going to persecute the judges who they do not comply with the law on victims (Sergio Massa), but on the other, the strategy endorsed by officials and fostering massive liberties and pressure on the judges ".
The document contains a direct criticism of President Alberto Fernández, who "ratifies the indiscriminate release of the prisoners, generating undue pressure on justice , which is not the responsibility of the executive branch that exercises it."
And it closes: "Organizations that respond to the Executive, such as the CELS, or the Commission for Memory, pressure the judges to release detainees . In the Province of Buenos Aires, the Ministry of Justice encourages massive freedoms and commutations of sentence The Executive has to agree and decide whose side it is on. "