The Chief Judge Dean César San Martín, President of the Permanent Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Courtretired this Monday for reasons of age and gave a farewell speech in which he reviewed his career and addressed the current challenges of the Peruvian justice system.
During the ceremony, the President of the Judiciary said, Janet Telloemphasized that the judge consistently applied the law “with rigor and humanity,” even in situations where there was “political and media” pressure.
“I, like the vast majority of judges, have had great and serious experiences, confrontations with those who wanted to limit and subjugate us, symbolic trials, difficult cases, dramatic cases, pressure and unfair and interested media campaigns, hatred from obsessive people,” he explained at the beginning of his speech.
San Martín recalled the beginning of his career in the administration of justice and the time in which he remained outside the judiciary: “I started the administration of justice very young, in the distant years of 1975. Therefore, I have already been working in the judiciary for 50 years, starting in the first year of the second phase of the military government (…) Look how far we have come,” he indicated.
He also mentioned his temporary departure from Justice between 1992 and 2004, a period during which he worked as a lawyer. “I left, but not by my will, that is, they removed me when the constitutional order in the country was interrupted. And I returned. One is stubborn, isn’t it? Always through public competition, because that was and has always been my calling: to become a judge,” he explained.
Without directly referring to it, San Martín questioned the position of the executive branch of former President Dina Boluarte, who had proposed Peru’s eventual withdrawal from the country Inter-American Court of Human Rights (Inter-American Court of Justice), after the International Court of Justice ordered not to issue the amnesty recently approved by Congress for soldiers and police officers prosecuted or convicted of crimes committed during the internal armed conflict (1980-2000) against the subversive organizations Sendero Luminoso and Movimiento Revolucionario Túpac Amaru (MRTA).
“We cannot oppose the Constitution to the international order. We cannot affirm the sovereignty of the nation state without it being integrated and consistent with the basic rules of jus cogens of the international order,” he said.
“Peru is not an island. We cannot maintain our legitimacy by ignoring the decisions that come from the bodies that the international community has created.. “We cannot be or accept a hybrid state, but rather a democratic state integrated into the international order,” he explained.
The possible withdrawal of Peru from the Inter-American Court represents an old demand from conservative circles, especially on the right, who believe that the Court’s decisions usually favor those accused of terrorism, such as the annulment of the trials of “Senderistas” and “Emerretistas” carried out by faceless judges (with hidden identities).
At the end, San Martín addressed a message to the judges, calling on them to remain united and “strengthen themselves on the basis of the rule of law, the Constitution and now something that they want to forget, international law.”
The chief judge headed the special criminal chamber that convicted the former dictator Alberto Fujimori sentenced to 25 years in prison for the massacres in Barrios Altos and La Cantuta. Recently, his name surfaced in connection with the Valkiria cases, linked to former prosecutor Patricia Benavides, and with Los Waykis en la Sombra, related to Nicanor Boluarte, brother of the former president.
An alleged closeness to Benavides’ parents was mentioned in Walkiria, but this could not be proven. In the other trial, a protected witness pointed out to him that he had allegedly intervened on behalf of Boluarte, a version that San Martín rejected.
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