The commission resumed on last Monday the analysis of the project with the participation of jurists who expressed their considerations on the content of the bill.

Among others, the lawyer Fernando Monsalve assured that the long preventive detention which those inmates have been subjected to ‘is nothing other than the persecution and anticipated fulfillment of a sentence.’

Monsalve went further and denounced that since October 2019 there has been a ‘grotesque increase’ in criminal prosecution in the actions presented by the Ministry of the Interior.

He also accused the Public Ministry, guarantee judges and appeal courts of lack of objectivity with respect to the application of preventive detention.

The lawyer Jaime Fuentes, one of the promoters of this initiative, said recently he hopes that the bill will pass, as it has already been done by two other commissions that analyzed it and that way it will be discussed by the plenary session.

At least 806 young people could benefit from the pardon, according to the figure given to that commission by the Group of Initiatives for the Release of Political Prisoners made up of family members and activists.

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