Erwin Sperisen

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Erwin Johann Sperisen Vernon (born June 27, 1970 ) is a Swiss - Guatemalan former police officer. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison in Switzerland in April 2018 for aiding and abetting sevenfold homicide for incidents in Guatemala in 2006. The judgment was confirmed by the Federal Supreme Court in 2019 and is final.

Life

Sperisen was born the son of Edoardo Ernesto Sperisen, who ran a glass factory and later a small furniture factory in Guatemala City and was brought into his center-right government by Alvaro Arzú in 1996 as vice minister. Grandfather Franz immigrated from Switzerland in 1928 and temporarily worked as an administrator on a coffee plantation. Erwin Sperisen's family no longer speaks German.

In 2003, Sperisen, known as "El Vikingo" because of his gigantic figure, was elected to the City Council of Guatemala City. Patronized by the then Interior Minister Carlos Much man , he was on August 1, 2004 under the conservative new president Óscar Berger despite relevant experience just watching at the fire department, but when not complicated in the corrupt networks in the police outsider to head the Policía Nacional Civil appointed . After the assassination of three Salvadoran MPs in the Central American Parliament and their driver in Guatemala City in 2007, Sperisen resigned after suspicion arose that the crime was ordered from above. In this context, however, no allegation was made against him; rather, he had contributed significantly to the conviction of the perpetrators. In April 2007, Sperisen moved to Switzerland because his parents, his wife and his three children were already living there.

After President Óscar Berger's resignation in January 2008, the Comisión Internacional contra la Impunidad en Guatemala (International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala, CICIG) , which he brought into the country and worked on behalf of the UN , expanded its mandate at the instigation of the successor government Álvaro Colom Caballero to fight corruption and, among other things, investigated the "Pavón case". It is about the storming of the prison Pavón (Granja Penal de Pavón) on September 25, 2006 (Operation "Pavo Real") with the participation of over 3000 officials, with which the state control of the prison administered by the inmates should be regained and in which seven inmates died.

In 2008 and 2009 various NGOs , including TRIAL International , Amnesty International and OMCT (Organization Mondiale contre la Torture), filed lawsuits against Sperisen over an incident called Finca Nueva Linda shortly after his inauguration . The allegations were proven false and were not followed up.

In August 2010, the CICIG charged Sperisen with ordering extrajudicial executions of at least seven prisoners in the "Pavón case" and now also of three other prisoners in the "El Infiernito" case. The latter concerns the shooting of three prisoners who had fled the “El Infiernito” prison (Operation “Gavilán”) in October 2005. The lawsuit also contained allegations of the formation of a criminal organization. Guatemala issued an international arrest warrant for Sperisen. Together with him, the CICIG sued Carlos Vielmann (former Minister of the Interior), Javier Figueroa (Deputy Police Chief), Alejandro Giammattei (head of the national prison system) and 14 other subordinate former government officials, among other things, because of the "Pavón case". Carlos Vielmann then went to Spain and Javier Figueroa to Austria, Alejandro Giammattei fled to the Honduran embassy in Guatemala. When Erwin Sperisen heard about the CICIG indictment against him via the media, he immediately reported to the then Geneva public prosecutor Daniel Zapelli and agreed to cooperate.

On August 31, 2012, he was arrested in Geneva on judicial assistance proceedings at the end of 2011 and taken to Champ-Dollon prison. Since he is Swiss, he cannot be extradited abroad without his consent.

The other high-ranking defendants were released in 2010/2011 and later acquitted: Carlos Vielmann in Spain, Javier Figueroa in Austria and Alejandro Giammattei in Guatemala.

In June 2014, the Cantonal Court of Geneva found that Sperisen had participated in the murder of six prisoners while storming the “El Pavón” prison and had shot another one with his own hands. A French witness who was imprisoned in Pavón at the time and claims to have seen the murder by Sperisen was believed. He was acquitted of his involvement in the murder of the three prisoners who fled El Infiernito prison in 2005. The cantonal court sentenced him to life imprisonment . Both Sperisen, who always denied the allegations and presented the killings as the result of an armed conflict, and the public prosecutor's office appealed.

On May 12, 2015, the appeal chamber of the cantonal court upheld the lower court judgment. In addition, Sperisen has now been found guilty of participating in the murder of the three prisoners who fled El Infiernito prison in 2005 and was again sentenced to life imprisonment. Sperisen appealed to the federal court .

In June 2017, the Federal Supreme Court overturned the judgment due to serious procedural deficiencies and referred it back to the Geneva Cantonal Court for reassessment. The cantonal authorities had the decisive question as to whether Sperisen was actually responsible for the events, the guarantees to which he was entitled under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) had not been adequately granted, and evidence was in part insufficiently justified and arbitrarily assessed. In the case of the charges relating to the incident in the "El Infiernito" prison, the alleged facts were not precisely defined. The Federal Court also reprimanded a "violation of the presumption of innocence", in particular with regard to the acquitted alleged co-conspirators Vielmann, Figueroa and Giammattei.

Before the new trial, the public prosecutor Yves Bertossa tried to supplement the charge with a subsidiary point of committing a crime by omission. His application was rejected by the appeal chamber of the Geneva cantonal court, and Sperisen's defense lawyers were outraged by the application. Former Guatemalan President Óscar Berger went to Geneva to testify in favor of Sperisen, as he did in the Figueroa trial, but was not admitted as a witness. Two CICIG investigators, Luis Modrego and Fernando Toledo, also testified at the trial, but they could not help clarify the case or make confusing statements. On the other hand, two operational heads of the police operation of "Pavón" called up by the defense were not admitted as witnesses, as in the previous proceedings.

On April 27, 2018, the Appellate Chamber of the Geneva Cantonal Court sentenced Sperisen to 15 years in prison for aiding and abetting the murder of seven prisoners. The 2006 murder charge of a prisoner from El Pavón Prison was dropped and he was acquitted of involvement in the 2005 murder of three El Infiernito prisoners. Sperisen pulled the verdict again before the federal court.

In 2019, the federal court upheld the prison sentence; The judgment is final. Sperisen's lawyers said they would not accept the judgment and would refer to the European Court of Human Rights . The lawyers criticized the fact that the Swiss judicial authorities had trampled upon the most elementary requirements for fair litigation, in particular the right to an impartial court.

criticism

The defense lawyers of Sperisens, Giorgio Campá and Florian Baier, described the judgment of April 2018 as " Kafkaesque " and a "colonial judgment ". It was only a matter of saving face for the court. A Geneva court should not presume to judge events in a distant, unknown country.

Alex Baur , editor of Weltwoche , who lived in Peru for a long time and researched in various Latin American countries , including Guatemala, and knows the conditions there well, expressed sharp criticism of the proceedings against Sperisen. The statements from Guatemala are contaminated by political machinations and full of contradictions. The key witnesses flown in from Guatemala had been bought with privileges and penalties and were nothing but speculation and nothing verifiable. What does not match the alleged murder plot is hidden in the process.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Andrea Kučera: An extraordinary murder trial. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . May 14, 2014.
  2. ↑ a b c Former Guatemalan chief of police Erwin Sperisen guilty of participating in extrajudicial executions. TRIAL International, April 27, 2018.
  3. ↑ Toni Keppeler: The city of criminals. In: The daily newspaper . August 25, 2010
  4. ↑ Alex Baur : Secret deal for life. In: Weltwoche . 5th July 2017.
  5. ↑ Ximena Villagrán: Carlos Much man it absuelto por ejecuciones extrajudiciales. In: Prensa Libre . 15th March 2017.
  6. ↑ The acquittal of Guatemala's ex-vice police chief is final. In: derStandard.at . October 14, 2013.
  7. ↑ Henry Estuardo Pocasangre, Javier Lainfiesta: A 11 años de la toma de Pavón, este es el último caso del cabo suelto. In: Prensa Libre. 26th September 2017.
  8. ↑ Andrea Kučera: Ex-police chief convicted of murder. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung. June 6, 2014.
  9. ↑ Verdict against Erwin Sperisen confirmed. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung. May 12, 2015.
  10. ↑ Barblina Töndury: Erwin Sperisen's complaint partially approved. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung. July 12, 2017.
  11. ↑ Alex Baur: Political prisoner. In: Weltwoche. 19th July 2017.
  12. ↑ The indictment for the third Sperisen trial is not expanded. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung. April 16, 2018.
  13. ↑ Andrea Kučera: It's all or nothing in the third trial against Sperisen. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung. April 14, 2018.
  14. ↑ UN experts testify at the trial of Guatemala's ex-police chief Sperisen in Geneva. In: watson . 17th April 2018.
  15. ↑ a b Alex Baur: Somehow, somebody, somewhere. In: Weltwoche. April 18, 2018.
  16. ^ A b Antonio Fumagalli: Erwin Sperisen sentenced to 15 years in prison - but he remains at large. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung. April 27, 2017.
  17. ↑ Kathrin Alder: Erwin Sperisen has to go to prison for 15 years. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , November 28, 2019.
  18. ↑ Alex Baur: «A nightmare that never wants to end». In: Weltwoche. 20th December 2017.
personal data
SURNAME Sperisen, Erwin
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sperisen Vernon, Erwin Johann
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss-Guatemalan police officer
DATE OF BIRTH June 27, 1970