@Frayba
On August 28th, the Chiapas judiciary decided to overturn the sentence, issued last May, by which five defenders of territory from San Juan Cancuc had been sentenced to 25 years in prison, accused of the homicide of a police officer.
In an interview with Avispa Media, Jorge Gomez, a lawyer for the Fray Bartolome de Las Casas Center for Human Rights (Frayba), recalled several of the pieces of evidence that the Center had presented at the appeal hearing held just under a week earlier, pointing out various violations to due process in the case of the Tseltal indigenous people.
According to the defense, the prevailing reason to annul the sentence was the lack of translators into the language spoken by the defendants. “Most of the Prosecutor’s evidence is from people who speak Tseltal, but there was no adequate translation, which is a constitutional right of indigenous people who intervene in a legal process, so everything has to be repeated again”, Jorge Gomez said.
The lawyer explained that the last stage of the criminal process, the oral trial, will have to be restored to present the evidence of the witnesses, experts and police officers involved in the case. Meanwhile the five defendants will have to remain in jail.
For more information in Spanish:
Justicia anula condena de 25 años contra indígenas tzeltales, pero permanecerán en prisión (Avispa Midia, 30 de agosto de 2023)
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