Former Guatemalan police commander Erwin Sperisen will be released next Monday – rts.ch

Erwin Sperisen will be able to leave the Witzwil penal establishment (BE) where he has been incarcerated since December 2022 after having been detained in Thorberg (BE) and Champ-Dollon in Geneva.

He will be prohibited from contacting the complaining parties or witnesses, from leaving Swiss territory without authorization and will have to submit his identity papers.

His lawyers, Giorgio Campa and Florian Baier, made this request for suspension of sentence based on a judgment of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) which has become final. Strasbourg judges ruled in a ruling made public in June that there had been a violation of the right to an impartial tribunal.

>> Read also: The European Court of Human Rights admits an appeal from Erwin Sperisen

A serious reason

TAPEM recalled that an interruption of sentence could be granted for a serious reason and that a procedural defect could constitute such a reason. The ECtHR found a violation of Erwin Sperisen’s procedural rights and a request for review is pending at the Federal Court, underlined the president of TAPEM.

The request for suspension of sentence runs “until the outcome of the request for review filed with the Federal Court”. This interruption of sentence occurs approximately four months before conditional release generally granted at two-thirds of the sentence. Note that a request for early parole requested by Erwin Sperisen was refused by TAPEM.

Erwin Sperisen was sentenced to fifteen years in prison by the Geneva Court of Justice in April 2018 for complicity in murder during the takeover of the Pavon penitentiary by the police in 2006. The Federal Court confirmed this judgment in November 2019. Dual Swiss and Guatemalan national, Erwin Sperisen was arrested in 2012 in Geneva, where he took refuge with his family in 2007.

Immediate decision

During the hearing on Thursday before TAPEM, one of his lawyers, Giorgie Campa, underlined that “Erwin Sperisen was detained for eleven years in Switzerland without having had the right to a fair trial: it is the ECtHR which says so and that should make TAPEM’s blood run cold.” “It is time to restore a situation consistent with human rights,” he insisted, calling for an immediate decision.

“We are in an emergency situation,” added his colleague Florian Baier. Erwin Sperisen said he was the victim of an unfair system, before being interrupted by the president of TAPEM who felt that this was not the time for a long statement going over the entire procedure.

The first prosecutor Yves Bertossa noted for his part that the judgment of the ECtHR does not contain a word which calls into question the reasons for conviction of Erwin Sperisen. “His lawyers are taking advantage of a media platform to make people believe that Erwin Sperisen is a poor innocent person,” he raged. He did not specify whether he would appeal against TAPEM’s decision.

ats/miro