Santo Domingo, DR.
The judge of the first examining magistrate’s court of the National District has been empowered to order the arrest of the former head of the Vehicle Retention Center “Canódromo El Coco,” colonel Ysabelita de Los Santos Pérez, and six other subordinates accused of the aggression against the Ombudsman and members of the press.
Magistrate Raymundo Mejía was granted the request for the opening of the trial against the accused by the coordinating judge of the examining courts, Kenya Romero, by means of a computerized random drawing.
The court was seized after the Prosecutor’s Office of the National District, through prosecutors Minerva Batista Hernández and Santa Matilde Reyes Valenzuela, presented formal accusations against the seven people implicated in the aggression perpetrated against members of the Ombudsman’s Office and the press in the Canódromo last April.
The aggressors
In the case where the data of the telephone that was taken from the journalist of the Listín was erased, the accused are Geraldina de los Santos Peña, Marisol Vargas, Nataniel Javier Javier, Starling Ramírez Sierra, Ronny Recio Rosario and Carlos Oliver Borque Paulino, in addition to the colonel de los Santos Pérez.
Marisol Vargas, Nataniel Javier Javier, and Geraldina de Los Santos Peña were accused of blows and wounds, crimes sanctioned by article 309 of the Dominican Penal Code. At the same time, De Los Santos Peña was charged with violating articles 5 and 10 of Law 53-07 on Crimes and High Technology Crimes.
In the indictment, the Public Prosecutor’s Office alleges that the accused assaulted the victims physically and verbally when a commission headed by the Ombudsman, Pablo Ulloa, went to the place and was going to the office of the person in charge of the Vehicle Retention Center Canódromo, of the General Directorate of Security and Land Transportation (Digesett).
Batista Hernandez and Reyes Valenzuela point out that Ulloa visited the facilities, together with the media, to conduct an inspection, motivated by multiple complaints filed in their offices.
They also detail that, when the victims were about to enter the administration offices of the center, the accused Ramirez Sierra snatched and destroyed the video cameras of a cameraman of CDN and a smartwatch, in addition to stripping a reporter of Listin Diario and the photographer of the Public Defender’s Office of their cameras, whom he also physically assaulted.