Swiss court upholds life sentence for Guatemalan ex-police chief
Swiss court upholds life sentence for Guatemalan ex-police chief
By AFP 2 hours ago .
A Swiss appeals court Tuesday confirmed a life sentence slapped on Guatemala's former police chief Erwin Sperisen for 10 murders committed in the Central American country.
Sperisen, 44, holds Swiss and Guatemalan citizenship and was sentenced last year after a three-week trial for the deaths of seven prisoners. The sentence was then widened to include three other jail deaths.
Having left his homeland for Geneva, Sperisen could not be extradited to stand trial for killing prisoners in the mid-2000s. But Swiss citizens can be tried at home for crimes committed abroad.
The case was launched after a lawsuit filed by the mother of one of Sperisen's victims, and the trial opened on May 15 last year.
Spreisen was charged over the summary execution and subsequent cover-up of the murder of seven inmates in Guatemala's Pavon jail in September 2006 and for the summary execution of three prisoners who had escaped from the Infiernito jail in 2005.
Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/world/swiss-court-upholds-life-sentence-for-guatemalan-ex-police-chief/article/433106#ixzz3ZxXA27mk
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Erwin Sperisen
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