Aída Merlano: The Bogotá Court sentences Aída Victoria Merlano to more than 13 years in prison for collaborating in her mother’s escape

A second Aida Merlano goes to jail. Aida Victoria Merlano Manzaneda, daughter of the convicted former senator Aida Merlano Rebolledo, has been sentenced in the second instance this Thursday to 13 years and eight months in prison for her participation in her mother’s cinematic escape from a doctor’s office in 2019. The influencer of 23 years old he is a well-known figure in Colombia; She has more than 5 million followers on Instagram and is a partner of the well-known and transphobic influencer Westcol. In 2022 she had been sentenced, in the first instance, to seven years of house arrest for the same act. After appeals from her defense and the Prosecutor’s Office, the Superior Court of Bogotá has once once more ruled once morest her, and with a more onerous sanction.

The Court confirms the central fact that a Bogotá criminal court had ruled: Merlano daughter played a fundamental role in the escape of her mother, who was sentenced in September 2019 to more than 16 years in prison for electoral crimes. On October 1 of that year, several guards from the Penitentiary and Prison Institute (INPEC) transferred the former congresswoman from El Buen Pastor prison, north of Bogotá, to an office for a dental check-up. During the appointment, the doctor left the room and Merlano climbed out of a window with a rope tied to a chair in the office, she fell to the platform, got on a motorcycle and fled to Venezuela. She remained hidden in the neighboring country until Venezuelan authorities captured her in 2020, in Maracaibo. She was extradited to Colombia and prosecuted three years later, following President Gustavo Petro reestablished relations with the Government of Nicolás Maduro.

The judge of the first instance found that Merlano daughter “would have entered [al consultorio] the essential elements for the escape. Among them is the rope by which she descended from the third floor of the building and the gloves she used to do so. “Items that entered the place in a black briefcase.” According to the ruling, Aída Victoria and her younger brother entered the medical center before her mother’s appointment, and hid the suitcase with the items in the bathroom. The dentist Javier Cely was in the crosshairs of Justice following the escape, but the authorities ruled out the possibility of his participation. The two Aida Merlanos insisted during the trial that Cely had nothing to do with the escape, and the Court confirmed his acquittal.

The Merlano family’s lawyer, Miguel Ángel Del Río, has always denied that the former congresswoman’s children participated in the escape. He alleges that he planned it by a “clan from the Atlantic department,” referring to the Char, who have ruled that department since the early 2000s. “Neither her daughter nor the dentist had anything to do with the organization. They [los Char] They had everything organized. She [Aida Merlano madre] She already had everything when she left prison and the INPEC dragonesses never checked her. That’s why she took it like that,” he told the media in 2022. Precisely, the current mayor of Barranquilla and heir to the power of the family clan, Alejandro Char, is the ex-lover of the former congresswoman. Following the Court’s decision, Del Río has announced that he will seek to have the Supreme Court of Justice annul the conviction, for which he has the option of an appeal for cassation.

The Court unfairly condemns Aida Victoria for her mother’s escape. We will go to the last instance of the Supreme Court with her free.

— Miguel Angel Del Río Malo (@migueldelrioabg) March 21, 2024

Although this case has been closed, Aida Victoria has another pending case. She hopes to be tried once more, this time for illicit enrichment and money laundering. Justice accuses her of setting up a company to hide the assets of her mother, who has spent almost her entire life living with corruption and clientelism in the Colombian Caribbean. Her daughter faces a possible sentence of between 6 and 10 years for this crime. For her part, the mother also hopes to be tried for the escape.

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