Omar Ladino case: “The Public Prosecution Service has not complied with the burden of argumentation and proof”

The judge with guarantee control functions of Barranquilla, José Sastoque, responded on Friday, March 17, to the questions asked the day before by the mayor of this city, Jaime Pumarejo, in response to his decision on the non-privative measure for the freedom imposed on the well-known leader of ‘Los Costeños’, Omar Ladino Vargas.

Let’s not forget that last Tuesday, March 14, after a long virtual hearing, the togado ordered not to send the defendant to prison, but he imposed a series of sentences on the 41-year-old businessman from Bogotá and appointed by the public Prosecutor’s Office as a financier of “multi-crime” with the seizure of land.

Then Mayor Jaime Pumarejo asked for a review of the case and also an explanation of the measure. “He is a defendant with very compelling information, where after months of investigation that person is brought to court to be arrested, we want that case and all others reviewed, but not on the basis that the judge was wrong .” , but that he then tells us himself what can be improved,” said the president of the Barranquillas.

In this sense, Judge Sastoque explained through a written report that “the defendant Omar Ladino was imposed seven non-custodial measures which were applied according to the principles of fairness, proportionality, necessity, adequacy and appropriateness. Among other things, paying a high bail, a ban on leaving the country and submitting to the supervision of a specific institution.

And regarding his decision, he defined that “it was due to the fact that the prosecution did not meet the argumentative and evidence sufficient to support his request. This is in accordance with the rules of preventive detention in force. Emphasized becomes that the Public Prosecution Service committed regulatory and factual errors that made it impossible for the court to grant the request to impose an intramural measure.

Among them, how to “carry out the interception of illegal communications and a counterpart of the judge from Montería granted it legality. Selective searches were carried out in the database without prior or subsequent control, kept confidential for the source’s subscriber or informant who gave rise to the investigation. In a line of people, there was no recognition of a complainant or declarant who pointed out the suspect as allegedly responsible for the offenses imputed. The unidentified source is full of prejudice, prejudice, blatant subjectivism towards the accused, shows objective hostility and distortion of impartiality in his story and corroborate much of his hypothesis with newspaper clippings, as they are not suitable evidence to show events that took place within a trial, nor testify to the occurrence of the events contained therein, but simply from the existence of the news.

And Sastoque concluded that “all of the above led to the certification of criminal and respective disciplinary copies.”