The Colombian Ministry of Justice has reactivated Thursday the extradition request of former congresswoman Aida Merlano, detained for two years in Venezuela after escaping months earlier taking advantage of an appointment with a dentist in Bogota.
The Colombian Minister of Justice, Néstor Osuna, has recognized that the process «is not fast», not because of the specific case or because of the fault of the Colombian or Venezuelan Justice, but because the process must be developed «with all the guarantees», reports ‘El Tiempo’.
Osuna has emphasized that the possible extradition will be possible thanks to the restoration of relations between Bogota and Caracas, at the same time he has ridiculed that the government of former president Ivan Duque asked for the extradition of the former president in charge of Venezuela Juan Guaidó.
«I don’t want to make jokes on that matter, but let’s say that this procedure was lost,» Osuna said with irony, thus slipping the illegitimacy of the mandate of Guaidó, the main opponent of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who left office at the end of 2022 after a vote of the opposition National Assembly.
The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, already confirmed in mid-January to be willing to ask Venezuela for Merlano’s extradition after she appealed to the Colombian president to demand to the Venezuelan authorities her immediate extradition to Colombian soil.
Merlano, who was a deputy in Colombia’s Congress for the Conservative Party between 2014 and 2018, managed to enter the Senate, but was indicted and sentenced in September by the Supreme Court to 15 years in prison for having bought votes to win her seat, among other charges.
Barely a month after her admission to prison she staged a movie-like escape. She took advantage of a visit to a dental clinic in Bogota to jump out a window and flee on a motorcycle that was waiting for her. Since then, her whereabouts were unknown until she was arrested in Venezuela.
Once in Venezuelan territory, she assured a court in Caracas that she was the victim of persecution by the then president of Colombia, Iván Duque, because she had enough evidence to «bring down» several prominent figures of the political class of her country.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
