• by Ángel Páez (lima)
• Tuesday, January 06, 2009
• Inter Press Service

Two couriers from the Netherlands caught trying to smuggle 3.2 kilos of cocaine out of Peru may now be able to serve out their sentences in their own country.

Yorleth Metz, 26, and Yokati Arion, 33, who were arrested by the anti-drug police in late December at an airport in Peru as they were preparing to board a plane to Amsterdam, face between six and 15 years in prison.

The two women may benefit by a new law passed by the Peruvian Congress that allows foreign nationals in some cases to serve their sentences in prisons in their countries.

According to national prison system (INPE) estimates, 1,086 foreigners are currently in prison in Peru, 90 percent of them on drug trafficking charges.

Cocaine production in Peru has grown over the last few years, making the country the world’s second-largest producer of the drug, after Colombia, according to United Nations figures.

As a result, drug trafficking has increased as well. Sources with Peru’s anti-drug police unit, DIRANDRO, told IPS that 235 couriers or 'drug mules' were arrested in 2004, 249 in 2005, 451 in 2006, and 721 in 2007.

The arrests have aggravated the severe overcrowding in Peru’s prisons.

As of Dec. 15, 2008, the police caught 372 couriers carrying a total of 1.6 tons of drugs last year.

The recently approved legislation modifies two articles of the new criminal code, allowing foreign nationals in prison to complete their sentences back home.

To qualify, the foreign prisoner must accept the sentence handed down by the Peruvian courts, and must pay the state a fine -- 'compensation' -- determined by the judge at the time of sentencing.

Of the 1,080 foreign inmates in Peruvian prisons at the time INPE published its report, 156 are from Spain, 150 from Colombia, 80 from the Netherlands (Metz and Arion brought the number to 82), 67 from Mexico (drug cartels from that country are very active in Peru), 56 from Ecuador, 52 from South Africa, 50 from Bolivia, 46 from Brazil, 31 from Portugal and 28 from the Dominican Republic.

The foreign prisoners are from 28 different European countries, 20 countries in the Americas, 20 African nations, and nine countries in Asia.

If their home country has a legal cooperation agreement with Peru, prisoners can seek a reduction or waiver of the compensation payment and other economic requirements. Inmates can also invoke humanitarian reasons to avoid paying the fine. INPE will be in charge of determining whether a prisoner qualifies for the legal benefits.

The main aim of the law is to relieve overcrowding in Peru’s prisons, which are filled far beyond capacity due to the boom in cocaine production and trafficking.

Justice Ministry sources reported that the Peruvian state spends some 3.50 dollars a day per prisoner.

But the law will actually only apply to a small part of the foreign prison population: the 257 inmates who have already been sentenced, which is only 24 percent of the total.

The other 829 will have to wait until they are convicted (or acquitted) by Peru’s slow-moving justice system. Once they are sentenced, they can file a request to serve out the rest of their time in prisons in their own countries.

Rómulo Pizarro, president of the government’s national drug control commission, DEVIDA -- one of the state bodies behind the new law -- said the legislation was designed as a humanitarian measure.

In Congress, Pizarro cited the case of Sandra Maribel Enríquez from Ecuador, who was caught trying to smuggle cocaine out of Lima in August 2005. She was handed a 13-year prison term and a 1,600 dollar fine.

Although she did not realise it at the time of her arrest, Enríquez was pregnant. Since she gave birth, she and her daughter have been living together in prison. But under Peruvian law, children can only stay with their mothers in jail until their third birthday. Because she has no family in Peru, the young Ecuadorean will have to relinquish her daughter to a government institution in March.

But if Enríquez’s application is accepted and she is exempted from paying the fine -- a possibility since she is poor -- she would be able to serve out her sentence in Ecuador, where she would be closer to her family and her daughter.

'The aim of the law, which does not cover serious crimes like terrorism, is to favour this kind of case, in which there are clearly humanitarian concerns and reasons,' Pizarro told IPS.

The chairman of the congressional justice committee, Juan Carlos Eguren, said the idea behind the new law is not to pardon foreign nationals who have committed crimes, but is based on humanitarian objectives.

'Allowing foreigners the possibility of serving their sentences in their home countries has a strong humanitarian significance, because it gives them access to their families, which is a necessary component of readaptation,' Eguren told IPS.

'Through this law, Peru is in no way renouncing its legal authority or the obligation to bring suspects to trial, because it only applies to those who have already been convicted. The crimes committed in our country are tried within the national territory. But prison terms serve a double objective: as punishment and towards reinsertion into society once the sentence has been served.'

When they are sentenced, Metz and Arion will have to demonstrate to Peruvian authorities that there are humanitarian reasons for them to be transferred to a prison in the Netherlands.

If they fail to do so, they are likely to serve their time in the Santa Mónica women’s prison in the Lima neighbourhood of Chorrillos. Of the prison’s 1,300 inmates, 958 are accused of or have been convicted of drug trafficking.

© Inter Press Service (2009) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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