The accusation control hearing against Germán Cáceres takes place in the House of Justice of Carcelén, north of Quito. Photo: Prosecutor’s Office
Edison Burbanklawyer of German Caceressaid he will ask that the trial be treated as a homicide and that, for him, the judge in the case is not competent to carry out said process.
“The judge is not competent to hear this case” if it is treated as a homicide, said the lawyer after assuring that he will ask on Wednesday, when the accusation control hearing that started this Tuesday, that the classification of the cause be changed.
He mentioned that the Prosecutor’s Office had expressed in the first hearing that the case is treated as a femicideand remarked that if it is treated as homicide, it should be done by a court of Criminal Guarantees.
Although he did not detail the causes of his position, he said that the ex-policeman’s defense will accept what the judge decides.
While Ecuador’s penal code contemplates 26 years in prison for the crime of femicide with aggravating circumstances, as is the case of Cáceres, since it was his wife and having thrown the body into a public place, the manslaughter carries a maximum penalty of 13 years in prison, which can reach 18 if found guilty.
Cáceres, who has confessed to being the author of the death of his wife, the attorney Maria Bernal, The right to silence has not been accepted as feared by the media, Burbano added after pointing out that in the process the ex-policeman’s defense will seek the truth.
“We want the truth and we will fight for the truth”the lawyer insisted and reiterated that he will seek that “the crime be classified fairly” and that there be a sanction “according to the law and justice.”
200 witnesses
For its part, the private prosecution has said that it will present some 200 witnesses in this case that generated indignation in the population, for having been perpetrated by a police officer in an institution compound.
So he made it known Jesus Lopezlawyer for Elizabeth Otavalo, mother of Bernal, when going to the judicial complex where the preliminary hearing for the presentation of evidence from the prosecution and the private accusation, with which a judge must decide whether to open a trial against Cáceres.
The events occurred in the early morning of September 11, 2022 when Bernal went to visit Cáceres in the Higher School of Policenorth of Quito, where he allegedly killed her in her room and then disposed of the body, which was found ten days later on a hill near the place.
The case aroused great social alarm when the murder took place inside a police precinct, and even Otavalo has come to classify it as a State crime, while caceres He fled and his whereabouts were unknown until the end of December, when he was captured in Colombia.
López was confident that he had “all the elements of conviction necessary to prove the criminal responsibility of the defendant German Caceresas well as the serious omission committed by Alfonso Camacho”, who was at the Higher Police School on the day of the femicide.
