Antauro Humala: The chances he has to get out of prison or be pardoned by Pedro Castillo

Following the ruling of the Constitutional Court reinstating the pardon granted by Pedro Pablo Kuczynski to Alberto Fujimori, Antauro Humala Tasso, the brother of former President Ollanta Humala jailed by the Andahuaylazo, did not he lost hope of being released from prison soon and wrote a letter to a media outlet explaining the reasons why he should be released.

In 2009, the ethnocaceous leader was initially sentenced to 25 years of imprisonment for the seizure of the Andahuaylas police station in 2005, which resulted in the death of four policemen. However, his defense appealed the sentence and succeeded in changing the crime of qualified homicide, of which he was accused, to that of simple homicide. Thus his sentence was reduced to 19 years, so he should be released from prison in January 2024.

Today Antauro Humala would have two ways to get out of the Ancon II Prison before 2024. In his letter to Exitosa, he argues that he would have already served his sentence for redemption (prison benefit) due to several months of work and education he has done in prison. The other way is for the President of the Republic, Pedro Castillo, to grant him a pardon, as he had promised in April 2021, while he was still running for president.

FOR PRISON BENEFITS

For Antauro Humala, “he is entitled to freedom for punishment served with redemption” and considers that so far he has an “excess of imprisonment of six months”. “I am, therefore, a kidnapped person from the State via MINJUS/INPE,” he said.

Infobae spoke with lawyer Vladimir Padilla Alegre, a member of Padilla & Chang Abogados, who explained that, as a general rule, “everyone who is convicted of a crime must serve the sentence” to which he was sentenced. However, he indicated that “the purpose of the penalty is to re-socialize”. Therefore, if one succeeds in proving that in the time that has elapsed he has achieved the purpose of the sentence, he could be released earlier.

Despite this, he made it clear that the serving of the sentence (in less time than the sentence dictates) is a power of the judge, rather than a right of the sentenced person.

“One can work or study (inside prison), but the reports of the commission that evaluates inside the prison can be negative. That is, you may have worked, but you have, for example, adaptation conflicts and remain a risk,” he explained.

“It's not about selling your job for freedom, what matters is that you re-socialize. Education and work are a means to that,” he added.

He noted that there are crimes, such as organized crime, that do not include prison benefits and that the one responsible for attesting to the resocialization of the prisoner is a multidisciplinary technical team of INPE (with psychologists, social workers, etc.) that prepares a report that is referred to a judge, who will decide whether or not to apply the a benefit that could release the incarcerated person.

AND THE PARDON?

Although, as a candidate, Pedro Castillo had promised that he would pardon Antauro Humala; in September 2021, his then Minister of Justice, Aníbal Torres, assured that pardoning the ethnochacerist leader would not be viable because the crime for which he is sentenced would not allow him access to presidential grace.

“According to the law, for the crime for which he is sentenced is not possible. It may have been that the campaign offered, it may have been that that was the intention, but now we have to look at the constitutional and legal possibility of that situation,” Torres said at the time.

In this regard, lawyer Vladimir Padilla recalled that “pardon is a presidential faculty, a lag behind the monarchy when the king, almighty, determined who gave freedom to”.

However, he considered that, although legally it is a presidential power, the head of State cannot ignore international law which states, for example, that crimes against humanity cannot be taken into account for a presidential grace.

He added that the most accepted pardon in the doctrine is that given for humanitarian reasons, when the incarcerated person is terminally ill.

For this reason, in the case of Antauro Humala, who has not committed a crime against humanity, he could receive a pardon if he is shown to be suffering from a terminal illness, but “not as a political favor”.

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