Arriaza Chicas was criminally charged for dereliction of duty. The prosecution said this resolution was due to procedural errors made by the Assembly in substantiating the urgency for the arrival of the Treasury Secretary.
The Fifth Justice of the Peace of San Salvador this afternoon definitively fired the director of the police, Mauricio Arriaza Chicas, for the crime of dereliction of duty for which he was criminally charged.
The judge argued that the Legislative Assembly’s order to rush the Secretary of the Treasury lacked factual and legal arguments.
After taking note of the resolution, the Public Prosecution Service believed that this was due to procedural errors by the Assembly in this case. “If the Legislative Assembly had based the pressure differently, the decision would certainly be different, because as the director of the police force, it is thanks to the constitution,” the prosecutor said in the case.
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In addition, after firing Arriaza Chicas, the judge also reprimanded him. “You must submit to the laws, not the people. Not worth a tweet, not worth a phone call. We do not live in a monarchy, you have to submit to the rule of law ”, he told the police director.
Arriaza was criminally charged with dereliction of duty by the Public Prosecution Service after refusing to present Finance Minister Alejandro Zelaya to a Legislative Assembly committee to answer for the use of public funds during the COVID-19 emergency .
The Commission instructed the Director of the PNC to have the Secretary of the Treasury appear; However, Arriaza did not obey the order for which he was being prosecuted. The committee examined the placement and allocation of funds in Letes, bonds and other securities issued by the government of El Salvador, in the context of the coronavirus pandemic.
According to the prosecution, Arriaza Chicas apologized for complying with the order to capture Zelaya, arguing that the use of public force is governed by the principle of the ‘last ratio’, as a restriction on the exercise of power in relation to the fundamental rights and that with On the basis of the reasons put forward by Zelaya, as director of the police corporation he determined that the Minister of Finance had good reason not to attend the summons.
Arriaza Chicas’s lawyers, for their part, argued that the Assembly’s order for the director of police to urgently bring Minister Zelaya was not legal.
Assembly approved resignation of Arriaza Chicas by 9F
In parallel to the legal proceedings he faced for dereliction of duty, the Legislative Assembly recently issued a statement informing the country-accredited diplomatic corps and the prosecutor’s office of Arriaza Chicas’s dismissal as police director for violation of human rights.
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The document was issued by the Special Commission that investigated the events that occurred before, during and after the militarization of the Legislative Assembly on February 9.
On December 17, delegates approved by 58 votes, 10 against and three abstentions the binding dismissal of the police chief, Mauricio Arriaza Chicas, for “serious human rights violations” following the events of February 9. However, President Bukele stated that he would not obey this order.