Arriaza Girls face criminal charge for breach of duty. The Prosecutor’s Office said that this resolution was due to errors of procedure of the Assembly in substantiating the constraint for the Minister of Finance to appear.
The Fifth Justice of the Peace of San Salvador definitively acquitted this afternoon the director of the Police, Maurici Arriaza Noies, of the crime of breach of duty for which he faced a criminal charge.
The judge argued that the order issued by the Legislature to urgently bring the Minister of Finance had no factual and legal arguments.
After hearing the resolution, the Prosecutor’s Office considered that it was due to procedural errors of the Assembly in this case. “If the Legislature had based the coercion differently, surely the decision would have been different, because as director of the Police it is due to the Constitution,” the prosecutor in the case said.
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After dismissing Arriaza Girls, the judge also reprimanded him: “You must submit to the rule of law, not men. It’s not worth a tweet, it’s not worth a call. We don’t live in a monarchy, you s’ he has to submit to the rule of law, ”he told police director who just lowered his head.
“If the (Legislative) Assembly had complied with the requirements of the process, my decision would probably be another. This is not a blank check for not attending Assembly committees or for disobeying orders,” warned the judge to police director.
Faced with the adverse decision, one of the prosecutors in the case said that once they have the decision in writing, they will make the legal assessments to see if they will file an appeal against the court decision.
The prosecutor said that although it seemed paradoxical, what was said by the judge to police director was a positive message for the country’s institutionalization.
Arriaza was criminally charged by the Public Prosecutor’s Office with the crime of breach of duty after he refused to appear before a committee of the Legislative Assembly to the Minister of Finance, Alejandro Zelaya, to be held accountable for the use of public funds in the emergence of COVID-19.
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The Commission ordered the director of the PNC, to bring the Minister of Finance to appear; but Arriaza also disobeyed the order for which he was prosecuted. The commission was investigating the placement and allocation of funds in letters, bonds and other securities issued by the Government of El Salvador, in the framework of the coronavirus pandemic.
According to the prosecution, Arriaza Girls apologized for carrying out the order to take Zelaya, arguing that the use of force is governed by the principle of “last resort”, as a limit to the exercise of power. in front of the fundamental rights and that based on the reasons that Zelaya set out, he as director of the police corporation determined that the minister of Property had a justified cause by not to have attended the citations.
For their part, Arriaza Noies’ lawyers argued that the order issued by the Assembly for the police director to take Minister Zelaya by coercion was not legal.
Parallel to the judicial process he faced for breach of duty, the Legislative Assembly recently passed an opinion and then communicated to the accredited diplomatic corps in the country and the Prosecutor’s Office on the dismissal of Arriaza Noies as director of the Police for violation of human rights.
Deputies approved last December 17 with 58 votes, 10 against and three abstentions the binding dismissal of the director of the Police, Maurici Arriaza Noies, for “serious violations of human rights” for the events that took place on February 9. However, President Bukele stated that he would not abide by this order.