Court confirms rejection of conditional release for ex-minister Luis Riart

An Appellate Court has confirmed the denial of conditional release for former Minister of Education Luis Riart, who is currently serving a three-year sentence for breach of trust. Riart will continue to serve his sentence from home.

Riart, who previously headed the Ministry of Education and Sciences (MEC), began serving his sentence on June 24, 2024. He was granted house arrest on December 10 of the same year. In June, his defense team requested conditional release, arguing that according to the calculations of the Specialized Criminal Execution Court No. 3, Riart had been eligible for this benefit since June 24 of the current year.

However, Magistrate Carlos Mendoza Peña initially rejected the request. He explained that the Penal Execution Code (CEP) requires specific conditions to be met for conditional release, which were not satisfied in Riart's case. Mendoza pointed out that Article 298 of the CEP mandates that the director of the penitentiary institution must submit necessary reports to the judge before the deadline for conditional release eligibility. This process cannot occur as Riart is not housed in a penitentiary facility.

Furthermore, Mendoza cited Article 42 regarding the progressive stages of a sentence and Article 73 on the mandatory fulfillment of each penalty period. He emphasized that to benefit from conditional release, an individual must be incarcerated within a national penitentiary establishment, a condition absent in Riart's situation.

Riart's defense appealed Mendoza's decision, but the Criminal Appeals Court, comprising judges Arnaldo Fleitas Ortiz, Adriana Giagni Rojas, and Arnulfo Arias Maldonado, upheld the rejection. The Execution Prosecutor, Dominica Rivas, had also requested the confirmation of Mendoza's ruling, stating that there were no grounds to overturn it.

“

(...) to benefit from the procedural institute of conditional release, the same must inexcusably be serving their prison sentence within one of the country's penitentiary establishments, this circumstance being absent, which is clearly a sufficient and necessary condition for this purpose (...)